a 
 
 d Ilustré 
 
 tten an 
 
 1 
 
 Wr 
 
SSSIw7 SSS SSS SSE SONIA ANN 
 
 Ets A i 
 
 aligass: 
 
 | low wxree IS DELINEATED TEE 
 : PALL ROADS FURNPIKE | 
 
 ~— CATES => 
 a, principet CORCK Ii? ng SD 
 
 LIN ISS 
 LY ME WEARS 
 
 i828 
 
 TTL Tad bclddaledse Llib lalate eisai 
 
 ~ 
 
 . & 
 } 1 ae nthe 
 
 urn sae ae Pi 
 
 *: Wormwood ~* ee 2 aa 
 Seruss stan: 
 
 westharn:- Q Gide <t 
 z Green. 
 
 > Kens Jon, = 
 ian > Grave CIM - net 
 
 EEE DEEMED 
 
 =F 
 = 
 = 
 = 
 = 
 = 
 — 
 = f 
 ¥ , 
 = P, 
 — I 
 =F 
 = ‘ 
 = be 
 = 
 => rd 
 Et = 
 i 
 = oe 
 = 
 = 
 _s 
 
 MEENA 
 
 ro ee 
 
 NOOR Poy NURWAEEEVOCLOF TPS ROTARY 
 
 a 
 
 AVADEVNUTTED 
 
 ANVWANATAANNSN AY ANUUARYUANAN ARYAN ANCL DAT 
 
 RUANANYA\ANERTARUANY ATR AVRARANAAN AERA AME 
 i ig Ns ae 
 
 PORT SMOUTH — 
 / MAIL 
 
 o 
 “a 
 
 ? OVER PUTNEY “/ 
 ; 7. yi BRIDCE JOINING 
 f THE PORTSMOUTH 
 f ROAD NEAR 
 Z / PUTNEY 
 g / _ OBELISK. 
 A. 
 
 Inset to “THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD” 
 
i etl, 
 Ran ie a7 
 : ; 
 
 ‘A 
 
hile 4 
 iets 
 r ae 
 « 
 be ae 
 
EMILY 
 MOORE 
 
 To EMILY MOORE 
 FOR THREE REASONS 
 
 FIrsTLy—Because she is a very charming old lady. 
 sEcoNDLY—Because for 40 years she was the hostess of that old 
 
 Coaching House, the Swan Inn, at Leatherhead. 
 
 AND LastLy—That many, many years ago she befriended and 
 
 gave to a very shy and very red-headed youth his first commission ; 
 
 the result of which was the terribly bad picture which now hangs in 
 her dining-room. u 
 
THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD . 
 
 id 
 
A COACHING INN 
 
THE 
 
 IRROMANCE of the ROAD 
 
 Written and Illustrated 
 by 
 
 CECIL ALDIN 
 
 Author of 
 =DOGs OF CHARACTER,” “RATCATCHER TO SCARLET,” etc. 
 
 LONDON 
 EYRE AND SPOTTISWOODE LIMITED 
 
 NEW YORK 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
 
 MCMXXVIII 
 
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY 
 EYRE AND SPOTTISWOODE LIMITED 
 HIS MAJESTY’S PRINTERS, LONDON, E.8 
 
LIST OF COLOUR PLATES 
 
 A MAP OF LONDON. . .. .. . Inside front cover 
 MECC R otc, Dedication 
 MeeOACHING INN- . . . . . . Frontispiece 
 THE SWAN WITH TWO NECKS . .._ .. facing page 8 
 GALLOPING ACROSS THE MAP. ... id 6 
 THE SNAIL OF THE KING’S HIGHWAY . TG 
 « BROADBACK” AND “NARROWBACK” ees 
 THROUGH THE OPEN TOLL-GATE .. ica 
 THE EVENING STAGE. at eee Hh cate 
 ING THEM? Pie tio 
 FIVE MINUTES FOR REFRESHMENTS. ENS \90 
 
 Merrett COUNTRY MAILS AT “THE 
 PEACOCK,” ISLINGTON. (After James Pottarp) oh 114 
 
 CARY’S SURVEY OF THE HIGH ROADS 
 FROM LONDON : : ata tt ey Pages. 817-123 
 
WV fi AY, 
 AS 01,0 Cy M/Z 
 SX CY E Lee, 
 
 Tg ace 
 win) \ eet us 
 WAAAY /] 
 ae {HP Bee 
 \\\ g 
 
 EIGHTEEN ya er TWENTY LElour 
 
 AND THIS IS THE STORY OF SOME OF ITS 
 INNS, ROADS, COACHES, AND TRAVELLERS 
 
 was at its zenith, and when, instead of petrol pumps and advertise- 
 
 ment hoardings, horses, coachmen, and inns had the limelight, 
 Patterson’s road map and coaching time-table was the traveller’s 
 guide, philosopher, and friend. On this map, with its mail-coach roads 
 clearly marked, we saw a picture which resembled a giant octopus, whose 
 ever-twisting tentacles spread in every direction over the landscape. 
 
 Then the map of England represented a beautiful thing, instead of 
 the series of architecturally ruled lines which our cartographers will 
 produce a few years hence, picturing, as they will do, the great straight 
 arterial motor and by-pass roads: a map representing something very 
 similar to the straight ruled lines on the face of a sundial. 
 
 On these mail-coach roads, instead of the skating-rink surface of 
 to-day, we had a highway of good, sound macadam; and, above all, we 
 had a varied and delightful landscape and vista ahead of us, instead 
 of, as we so often see now, a road with every bend, corner, and tree 
 carefully eliminated. 
 
 In two thousand and twenty-eight the countryside will probably be 
 a mass of hoardings, petrol pumps, and aeroplane landing-stations—a 
 cross between the view we now get when travelling upon the railway 
 between Birmingham and Wolverhampton, or motoring out of London 
 on the ugly Great West Road. 
 
 But two thousand and twenty-eight is as much ahead of our own 
 times as eighteen hundred and twenty-eight is behind them, and as 
 contemplation of the picturesque past is more pleasant than speculation 
 
 |: eighteen hundred and twenty-eight, when the coaching age 
 
 A 
 
oe DS on Cee 
 : ats e 
 
 2 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 on the ugly future, we will return to the King’s highway of 1828, to 
 the rattle of the bars and pole-chains of the coaches, and forget for one 
 brief hour that we have ever seen a railway train, motor-bus, telephone, 
 telegraph pole, wireless aerial, aeroplane, or Douglas Fairbanks and 
 Mary Pickford. 
 
 In these preliminary pages, and before we set out on our journeys, I 
 should like you to visualize the people we may meet, the roads we may ~ 
 travel over, the carriages we may ride in, and the inns we shall pass, in — 
 the dress, features, build, and architectural adornments in which they — 
 appeared in the year of my story. Therefore I put before you this — 
 introductory puppet-show-prologue in which we will take a first view  _ 
 of some of my actors and properties. le 
 
 Some of us remember the old-time showman (the precursor of our 
 Charles B. Cochran and Bertram Mills) who stood outside his booth 
 before the performance commenced, thumping on his drum and 
 declaiming of the wonders within. 
 
 daylight) before the coed or Hie 2 waiting to enter Be show . ‘ 
 Like this old-time shomenate my puppets shall also make a fries 
 
 appearance on the threshold of my booth, in order, I hope, to persuade ; 
 
 you to enter. : 
 
A PROLOGUE OF ATMOSPHERE 3 
 
 My characters and properties, however, will not be dressed up to 
 act a part, but, to me at any rate, will be the real travellers, coaches, 
 inns, and roads of 1828, all being evolved from prints and paintings 
 which were drawn from life at the actual period which they 
 depict. 
 
 An orchestration of atmosphere played before the curtain rises. 
 
 And now let us return to our old friend Patterson, of Pazterson’s 
 Roads, the compiler of the travellers’ vade-mecum of those days, and 
 the man who must have known more of the “ cities, market towns, 
 Remarkable Villages, Nobility, Gentry, Antiquities, Natural Curiosities, 
 and other remarkable objects throughout the Kingdom,” than anyone 
 else in the world. 
 
 To those who do not already know Patterson I would advise a 
 pilgrimage to the dirtiest secondhand book-shop available, where, in a 
 box, labelled in large type, “* All this lot sixpence each,” they will in all 
 probability find a copy of this guide to the “direct and principal 
 cross roads of England and Wales with part of the roads of Scotland,” 
 wherein is given, “‘ remodelled, augmented, and improved in a plan 
 both novel, clear, and intelligible,” a table of the population, heights 
 of mountains, and the times of the arrival and departure of the mails 
 from every town in England, together with all the toll-gates at which 
 we must pay, the bridges which we shall cross, and the inns at which 
 we can procure the necessary post-horses. 
 
 As the conjurer will tell you when he shows you how his trick is 
 done: “ It’s so simple.”’ 
 
 Once this invaluable work is in our hands, travelling by coach or 
 post-chaise in eighteen hundred and twenty-eight becomes a matter 
 of simplicity itself. 
 
 Another great advantage about Patterson is that he is always chatty 
 ona journey. Let us say, for instance, that we propose (with Patterson) 
 
4 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 to travel from London to Land’s End. On climbing into our seat 
 on the top of the coach at the Gloucester Coffee Tavern in 
 Piccadilly, we at once open his invaluable work at page 85, and 
 for every mile of the way from London to Land’s End we shall 
 have in front of us the information as we drive down the road, 
 as to whom of the “nobility and gentry” lived in the various 
 seats on either side of the highway, information as to the monu- 
 ments, obelisks (great pets of our forefathers), and other “ natural 
 curiosities’? which we shall pass, and the names of the inns and 
 industries, etc., of the country towns we shall drive through; all 
 this local information and gossip being vouchsafed us in a volume 
 which consisted of some 713 pages (octavo) and maps, and which 
 in my case cost the large sum of sixpence: a chatty little person 
 was Patterson. 
 
 Having procured this first inducement to travel, we will now set 
 out; but before we do so let us glance at the map of London which 
 accompanies my story. 
 
 The showman will now indicate with his drumstick various points 
 in this map, which, although it is only a plagiarism of, and compiled 
 from, other, older, and dirtier maps, is here included as a diagrammatic 
 picture to illustrate the roads, and various ways, by which we left 
 London if we travelled at night by the mail, instead of by the ordinary, 
 slower, and less punctual day stage-coaches. 
 
 I make no apology for this plagiarism of maps and other “ exhibits,”’ 
 as they say in the police courts. I know from experience something 
 about plagiarism; I am used to it. After all, my puppets are only 
 puppets, copied originally from real life, but now culled from many 
 dusty nooks and corners. 
 
 For all that, my cast is to me a real cast, even to the little mail- 
 coaches you see upon the map starting out on their nightly journeys 
 along the tentacles of the octopus of roads I call England. 
 
 In these pages we might travel by His Majesty’s mail, stage-coach, 
 our own private travelling chariot and four, or the hired post-chaise. 
 Or we might be among the humble travellers who journeyed down the 
 road in the four-mile-an-hour, broad-wheeled, covered wagon, drawn by 
 six or eight heavy horses, which lumbered its way across the countryside 
 like a huge snail. 
 
A PROLOGUE OF ATMOSPHERE 5 
 
 Before we ring up the curtain, however, let us take a cursory glance 
 at England and the chief historical events and happenings of that time, 
 some of which were connected with the road. 
 
 First and foremost, 
 
 GOD SAVE THE KING. 
 
 In 1828 George IV had been crowned seven years, and the future 
 Queen Victoria was nine years of age. Mr. Canning, the Premier, 
 had died that year, and the Duke of Wellington had been made 
 Prime Minister. The Bubble companies panic of 1825-26 was 
 over, and the battle of Navarino had been won the year before, but 
 no railway had yet been opened; the mails being first conveyed by 
 rail ten years later. 
 
 For getting out of London upon the south side we had Old London 
 Bridge still standing, the houses upon it having been removed many 
 years before; and now the new bridge, opened in 1831, was being 
 actively discussed. Southwark Bridge had been built the year Queen 
 Victoria was born, and Vauxhall Bridge three years earlier; besides 
 these, we had Westminster, Waterloo, Old Blackfriars, Battersea, and 
 Putney Bridges, the last two being wooden ones, also Hammersmith 
 old suspension bridge, but not the present one. 
 
 The Post Office was then in Lombard Street, that street with a very 
 bad reputation in earlier reigns, but the new Post Office of St. Martin’s- 
 le-Grand was in the course of construction. The mails had been carried 
 by coaches as far back as 1784, when, at the instigation of John Palmer, 
 of Bath, mail-coaches first took the place of the riding post-boys as 
 carriers of His Majesty’s mails. Twenty-seven mail-coaches now started 
 at eight o’clock nightly from London, conveying the mails to every part 
 
6 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 of the United Kingdom, while those from the country arrived at the 
 Post Ofhce between six and seven in the morning. 
 
 Every main road had its toll-gates for the maintenance and upkeep 
 of the road, although twenty-seven toll-gates near London had been 
 removed by Act of Parliament the previous year. 
 
 ISLINGTON TURNPIKE. 
 
 Of the roads themselves. In 1818 Loudon Macadam had intro- 
 duced his method of road-making, consisting of stones broken to 
 six ounces weight, and the use of clean flints and granite chippings, 
 and his son was now Surveyor-General of metropolitan roads. 
 
 Before Telford and Macadam, both pioneers of road engineering, 
 took over the mail and turnpike roads, travelling by wheeled trafhe was 
 a very serious and uncomfortable proceeding. You might be stuck in 
 a bog at Kensington for a night, or left in the mire of the Dover road, 
 near Dartford, until a farmer and his team could be found to pull 
 you out. 
 
 When, however, Telford, by building a sound surface on the Bristol 
 road in 1784, made it possible for coaches to take the place of mounted 
 post-boys for carrying the mails, the main roads began to improve; 
 and in the golden age of coaching, 1828, after Macadam had also 
 introduced his system of road-making, the coach roads were very 
 good travelling. 
 
 These roads—mail roads—the Holyhead, Great North Road, 
 Bath, Portsmouth, etc., were not narrow as they are to-day, the York 
 road being often wide enough for six coaches to pass abreast, and in 
 many places thirty yards across. This is amply verified by many 
 coaching prints of the period. Later, when railways superseded most of 
 
 4 
 > ie A 
 T ou f nee se 
 fee sal f 
 
 - oe te 
 
ea a wee, | ol 
 7 * i 
 
 a 
 . 
 
 A PROLOGUE OF ATMOSPHERE 7 
 
 the road trafic, and the toll-gates, where the toll for the upkeep of 
 the highway was levied, had been done away with, the sides of the 
 roads were often allowed to become grass-grown, owing to the cost of 
 maintenance falling upon the local authority or the old highway 
 boards. Hence the gradual narrowing and encroachment of grass borders 
 which we now see on the once broad mail-coach roads of 1828. 
 
 All of which may be perhaps in itself rather heavy going, but if, 
 when you start with me down the roads, both of us have a picture of 
 them clearly visualized in our minds, it will save many explanations 
 during the journey. 
 
 A CoacH OFFICE. 
 
 In 1828, instead of railway stations, we had coach offices and 
 inns, the headquarters of the various large and prosperous coaching 
 establishments. 
 
 These inns, from which many of the mails set out, were mostly 
 situated in the heart of the City of London, “‘ The Bull and Mouth” 
 in Aldersgate Street, “‘ The Swan with Two Necks”’ in Lad Lane, 
 ‘The Saracen’s Head,” Skinner Street, “‘ The Spread Eagle,”’ Grace- 
 church Street, and, coming a little farther west, ‘“ The Belle Sauvage,” 
 Ludgate Hill, “‘ The White Horse ” in Fetter Lane, and “ The Golden 
 Cross ’’ at Charing Cross being the most important of them. 
 
8 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 William Chaplin, the founder of Chaplin and Co., the well-known 
 carrying firm of to-day, owned ‘‘ The Swan with Two Necks” and 
 ‘““The Spread Eagle’ inns, and himself horsed some 350 miles on 
 fourteen mails that left London nightly, amongst them the Holyhead, 
 Halifax, Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol, Norwich, and many. others. 
 To do this he had over 1,000 horses daily at work on the roads. 
 
 Another City house on my map, “ The Bull and Mouth,” was owned 
 by Edward Sherman, who had at this time been its landlord for five 
 years. He horsed the Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Exeter, and other 
 mails, but as he married three wea/thy old maids in succession he 
 must have been more of a dusimess than a horsey man. Unlike 
 Chaplin, he was never known to have driven a team himself. 
 
 Sherman’s coaches, with the exception, of course, of the mails, 
 which were made to Government pattern, were all painted yellow on the 
 under-carriage and panels, and were of what was then a very old- 
 fashioned pattern. The stabling at all these big City inns was almost 
 invariably underground. 
 
 ‘The Swan with Two Necks ”’ and “‘ The Bull and Mouth ” were 
 the most important and largest coaching inns in the city, taking the 
 place of our Euston and King’s Cross railway stations. 
 
 re Os Ye 
 TB ~ AWA d Noe 
 
 THE DEVONPORT MAIL. 
 The “ Quicksilver.” 
 
 ‘The White Horse,” Fetter Lane, stabled the Portsmouth and 
 Yarmouth mails and many fast stage-coaches, while the Gloucester 
 coftee-house, standing in Piccadilly, where the Berkeley Hotel now 
 stands, and ‘‘ The White Horse Cellars’? near by, were the head 
 offices and starting-points for the West Country mails. 
 
THE SWAN WITH TWO NECKS 
 
: 
 : 
 E f 
 
 ae eee ee 
 
 Ter sr 
 
 7 
 
 oe Ae 
 
 : ovis 4 acy horses daily at work ‘on the roads, 
 
 aches, wah the excemiion, of gourd, of 4 
 
 Syiee 
 
 ba EG AR H a i Nec 
 
 ROMANCE OF THE. ROAD- 
 ye fey pugley ot £ haplin sad Cas, the 
 
 sy, cnet ° The Swan with Two Nec 
 ‘ipie, and biewelf heceed some g5o- 
 rahe | ight iy, armangst them the Hol 
 
 org by Stet Bristol, Norwich, and many ¢ 
 
 - OR 1 ‘The Bull and Mouth,” was 
 nan, whe ar. at ” hi ris time been its landlord 
 i the Edinbarg gh, Glasgow, Leeds, Exelon 
 re seve three wealthy old maids in. su 
 
 ore of a dwsrrer than a horsey 
 wer KnNOWH tO have dl driven a team hirneelf, 
 
 - 
 
 te (save Peg ce pe FEE ETE Be were all painted yel 
 . ‘: ant were of whet AAS then a 
 [he tabling at all theer big City inns | 
 
 * 
 
 and “ The Bull and M 
 MESO AT Eafe iAEAT In the ¢ . 
 and Kin 2's Cross railway stations. 
 
 Tue Devoxport Mam, ~ 
 
 by a 
 The “ Quicksiiver.” “= 5 
 
 ree,” “Fetter Lane, § Dit 
 und many Fast stage-eoncher, 
 : ty » Piccadilly, where’ the: 
 be w hi ce Ehiorse “Cletie 
 ey points for the Wet 
 
 *y 
 
A PROLOGUE OF ATMOSPHERE 9 
 
 The sacks containing the mail were brought down to Piccadilly 
 each evening at eight o’clock from the Post Office in a small, red, 
 two-wheeled mail-cart, drawn by a fast-trotting cob and accompanied 
 by the guard. James Pollard shows these carts in many of his 
 prints of the time. 
 
 THE TWO-WHEELED MAIL-CART. 
 
 Immediately on arriving at his waiting coach, the guard would 
 put his mail-bags in the hind boot, the slamming of the lid of which 
 was the signal for the coachman to start away on his all-night journey. 
 His Majesty’s mails waited for no man. 
 
 London streets were mostly of stone, including Piccadilly and the 
 west end of London. Highgate, Kilburn, Paddington Green, Kensing- 
 ton, Chelsea, Wandsworth, New Cross, Greenwich, Stepney, Wanstead, 
 Walthamstow, Hackney and Islington were villages; and Fitzroy Farm 
 and Chalk Farm were farms in reality. 
 
 The King had his private road, now the King’s Road, Chelsea, from 
 Putney Bridge to the Queen’s palace in St. James’s Park, and a few 
 “neat houses and gardens”’ stood between Vauxhall Bridge and 
 Battersea wooden bridge; Tattersall’s was behind St. George’s Hospital, 
 then the edge of London; Belgravia was not built, although in some 
 places started; Kensington gravel pits and Knightsbridge barracks were 
 outside London. All of which can be so much more easily shown by 
 following the showman with his drumstick as he points across the map 
 
 than by reams of printed matter. 
 B 
 
AER 
 
 10 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 The mails here depicted started along the actual roads upon which a 
 they are drawn, and the accompanying diagram shows where each mail 
 branched for its final destination. é: 
 
 a 
 
 EDINBURGH 
 
 we 
 a 
 
 o’clock nightly my little coaches went galloping across the map 
 England; and we will now take a glance at the mail itself. 
 
 Seven passengers only, three outsides and four insides. The guar 
 wearing the King’s uniform, was a Government official, and not 
 servant of the proprietors, the people who horsed the mete es 
 
 A few of the older coachmen wore the red and gold, and were e 
 allowed to do so as a reward for long service, but they were not official © 
 
THE MAP 
 
 OSS 
 
 GALLOPING ACR 
 
upon which | 
 e each ‘oat 
 
 ~ 
 
 GLARD 
 
 © 
 
 f gree Fee ng across spre 
 
 at the mail itself. 
 aad fi heer 438) 
 
A PROLOGUE OF ATMOSPHERE II 
 
 servants of the Post Office, their wages being paid by the coach pro- 
 prietors. The guard had his clock in a sealed case which he carried 
 slung over his shoulder, and was responsible for seeing that 
 the coach ran to its time-table, the reason for the late arrival 
 / of the mail at any place having to be clearly stated on 
 the time-sheet or the way-bill which he carried. His clock 
 was set nightly at the Post Office and handed to him in its 
 case as he left the guards’ room to pick up his mails. 
 
 So accurately did the mail-coaches run to their time- 
 tables that, in country towns, we could safely set our 
 watches by the time of the arrival or departure of the 
 
 F Tae mail, instead of as we now do by the striking of Big Ben 
 OACHMAN. . 
 on the wireless. 
 
 The mail-coaches themselves were all made to one pattern, and 
 supplied by Messrs. Vidlers, of Millbank, the “ proprietors’ paying 
 them a rate per mile of running. In reality, these coaches were only 
 carriers of the mail-bags and their guard, the Government servant, on 
 a specified contract with the Post Office; the proprietors or men who 
 horsed the coaches (generally large inn proprietors) taking all the 
 moneys received from carrying the seven passengers allowed by law, 
 and also the small parcel traffic, though this was sometimes a perquisite 
 of the coachmen. 
 
 Men like Chaplin or Sherman would undertake a contract with the 
 Post Office to horse and run the Edinburgh or other mail, and would 
 then get other partners or “ proprietors ”’ to join in horsing it over the 
 middle ground, etc. 
 
 The wording in gold lettering upon these coaches only varied in the 
 name of their destination and the number on the hind boot; but on 
 the stage-coaches the body, and fore and hind boots, 
 were often liberally plastered with the names of the 
 various towns through which the stage passed on its 
 journey; and the colour of the under-carriage and 
 body varied from red, blue, or yellow, whilst on the 
 mail-coaches the coloured portions were always red. 
 
 Frost or snow, hail and shine, these little 
 coaches went galloping nightly across the map ; 
 and when one reads that a celebrated coachman— Tue GuaRD. 
 
12 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 Charlie Holmes, to wit—was presented with a piece of plate by 
 admirers and reas after driving the mail 598,000 miles in 
 twenty-six years, it gives some idea of the hardihood of the men of 
 the box seat! 
 
 I can hardly see a modern chauffeur driving, at night, 23,000 miles 
 a year with no adequate protection for himself from the vagaries of 
 our English climate. Holmes performed this feat for his employers, 
 Messrs. Costar and Waddell, without having one single accident; 
 the old stage coachmen could certainly teach our chauffeurs of to-day 
 a very great deal. 
 
 - Such, then, were the coaches in which we rode and undertook our 
 journeys: at that time travelling on the mail costing us about four- 
 pence a mile outside, and fivepence inside, while we paid more if we 
 travelled by post-chaise, and a little less if we travelled by stage-coach. 
 
 A PRIVATE TRAVELLING CHARIOT AND Four. 
 
 If we journeyed in our own private travelling chariot and four, we 
 travelled de /uxe, but we did mor have a new carriage every one or 
 two years as we now do: the family coach being handed down as an 
 heirloom from father to son. The more wealthy sent on relays of 
 horses for the shorter journeys, or might hire post-horses where necessary, 
 to draw his lordship and his lady in their own carriage across the 
 country. 
 
 Not so many years ago I was met one evening at a station in 
 Rutlandshire by a carriage with a postilion and pair of horses. 
 Although I had only a short distance to travel to my host’s hunting-box, 
 the view of the rider bobbing up and down as seen through the front 
 window of this carriage remained for a very long time in my memory. 
 
 Through the two little windows in front of the family chariot, or 
 the hired post-chaise—this was the view our forefathers had for hours, 
 and even days at a time, when travelling. Even on my short journey 
 
A PROLOGUE OF ATMOSPHERE 13 
 
 this vista had a distinct monotony after a mile or two; on an all-day 
 journey it must have been very trying to the nerves. Up and down, 
 up and down, up and down, mile after mile, the hind view of a pair 
 of horses and a small man rising and falling in his saddle. The right- 
 hand seat in a post-chaise was certainly the one to scramble for, for 
 there you had only the riderless horse to block the view. 
 
 I think that, notwithstanding the possible buffets of the weather, the 
 top of the coach (a real bird’s eye-view of the country as compared 
 with the worm’s eye-view we get in our ‘“‘sports model” to-day) must 
 
 POSTING. 
 
 have been better “ going”’ than the back eye-view of the postilion 
 always in front of us when we travelled by post-chaise. 
 
 The post-boy himself was often an interesting character, although 
 his life could not be called one of ease and luxury. 
 
 Large posting-houses always had these boys standing about in the 
 
 A Birp’s EYE-VIEW OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 inn yard waiting in sequence for their turn to take the road. The 
 one next on the list to go out was always booted and spurred, with 
 his false leg (which saved his own being damaged by the pole) ready 
 adjusted, and his pair of horses standing on the pillar reins; the then 
 well-known call up the yard, ‘‘ Next pair out,” being his cue to 
 start a stage in either direction, at any time of the day or night. 
 
“a = 
 
 Sone eg 
 
 14 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 A little group of these post-boys, small men of the jockey type, your 
 showman produces for you. You will note the high choker tied post-boy 
 fashion often over the chin, while in rough weather the long drab over- 
 coat, well split up the back, covered the short page-boy coat, leathers, 
 and top-boots. Of these latter coats the colour varied, yellow being 
 generally the colour in which South of England post-boys appeared, 
 while blue, or even red, was worn by those of the North. Sometimes 
 in the yard a smock was worn over this livery. 
 
 Post-BOYS WAITING FOR THE “‘ NEXT PariR OvT.” 
 
 At busy times every large inn yard had its six, eight, or ten waiting 
 post-boys; and though they have completely disappeared since the 
 advent of railways, they were such a feature of the roads that they 
 are being given a considerable place in my pictures. 
 
 In a country town all the ‘‘ Blue Boar” boys might be in white 
 
 beaver hats; while old Tom Grumpy, of the “ King’s Arms,”’ would : 
 put all his post-boys in a black beaver to make them distinctive 
 
 when on the road. 
 
 wold to York five times in one day, making a total 
 distance of 130 miles—let us hope not with the same 
 
 It would be interesting to know how many men 
 to-day could emulate the performance of a North ~ 
 country boy who took a pair of horses from Easing- 
 
 erm 
 
 pair of horses! Another York post-boy rode for a 
 
 Pace, 
 
 | 
 | 
 
 RT A A I a 
 
 SS 
 
 vi 
 
A PROLOGUE OF ATMOSPHERE 15 
 
 wager 150 miles on five successive days on the London to York 
 road. 
 
 Like our modern waiter, they relied for a living more upon tips 
 than upon the wages they received, their employer generally giving 
 them board and lodging instead of wages. Each “‘ boy”’ had four 
 horses under his charge, and during busy times would often do fifty 
 miles or more a day. | 
 
 Many of the older boys had been carriers of the mails before the 
 Post Office sent letters by mail coaches; a hireling post-boy’s job 
 was obviously their mét#er when the Government had no further use 
 for their services. 
 
 If we can believe the numerous pictures that have been painted, 
 and the prints that have since been made, the plums of the profession 
 must have been in the towns and villages a few miles from the 
 Border. Here, at any time of the day, an eloping pair of lovers 
 might be driven into the yard, the ‘‘ next pair out’ being then the 
 wedding carriage. 
 
 What romance! what excitement! for that post-boy constantly 
 to take this wedding carriage to Gretna Green with eloping brides 
 and bridegrooms, where the notorious blacksmith—who, by the by, I 
 believe, was not a blacksmith at all—would probably end their romance. 
 A post-boy’s life near Gretna Green must have been almost as romantic 
 as that of the verger in a fashionable wedding church to-day. 
 
 However, familiarity #ay breed contempt, and even a continuous 
 stream of runaway couples may have damped the postilion’s romantic 
 feelings; but the “kick,” as the Americans say, was in the tail, for a 
 bridegroom should always be in generous mood, and post-boys no doubt 
 received handsome tipping for that last stage. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 And then at the end, and a long, long way behind mails, stage- 
 coaches, travelling chariots, and post-chaises, we come to our old 
 friend, the snail of the King’s highway. 
 
 Eight hairy-heeled horses drag her laboriously over the hills and 
 dales of England: almost the oldest conveyance of them all; a broad- 
 wheeled wagon which had survived the mud and bogs of pre- Macadam 
 
16 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 and pre-Telford roads, and which still retained the nine-inch wide 
 wheels which had sloshed, bumped, and slithered through the mire of 
 the previous century. 
 
 Such a picturesque vehicle must be produced on my stage in its 
 entirety—piled inside and out with country produce and parcels, 
 and carrying only a few slow-talking, slow-thinking country people, 
 on its long and wearisome journey at four miles an hour. 
 
 THE SNAIL OF THE KING’S HIGHWAY. 
 
 But besides the width of her wheels, the broad-wheeled slow wagon 
 had some other interesting features all her own. 
 
 Firstly, an old horn lanthorn of the very largest size always hung 
 at the prow of our old friend: the light from which, if they ever had 
 to travel at night, could have only just reached the two wheel- 
 horses’ heads, the remaining six being in a state of semi or complete 
 darkness. 
 
 Then the driver, who was more often than not also the owner, rode 
 beside his team on a sturdy cob, from the back of which he could 
 effectively use his long and supple whip. 
 
 Piled on the top of the overhead covering, we had the chickens 
 in coops, eggs in baskets, and other produce of the farm and country; 
 while the harness jangled with brasses and bosses, and the leather on the 
 gaily-edged, flapping tops of the collars waved from side to st with 
 the slow-swinging movements of the team. ae 
 
 The broad-wheeled wagon may not have been a Bentley of the 
 road, but it certainly took a ues) important place in any road picture 
 of the period. r 
 
 Those were our conveyances, instead of our railway carriages or = 
 Rolls-Fords of to-day ; the only other way of getting about the country 
 being on Shanks’s mare or across the back of a hack or roadster. 
 
THE SNAIL OF THE KING’S HIGHWAY 
 
A PROLOGUE OF ATMOSPHERE 17 
 
 On the roads themselves we met many people and things which 
 are unknown to us as we dash along them to-day; but the chief feature 
 that would strike us, if we journeyed in 1828, would be the small number 
 of cottages and houses on the great main roads, and, for those who come 
 from over the Border, the number of toll-gates at which we would have 
 to pay. “‘Saxpence”’ didn’t take us far in those times. One has only 
 to glance from side to side of the modern road to realize how few of 
 the houses stood there one hundred years ago; about one in fifty being 
 the average on any portion of the road, which we can safely say has 
 not been much built upon in recent years. 
 
 A century ago London practically ended at Islington, Paddington 
 Green, Tyburn, Hyde Park Corner, etc. etc. 
 
 Out in the country on the mail and turnpike roads there was, of 
 course, less building going on than nearer London; but Kensington and 
 Knightsbridge to Turnham Green were gradually getting a continuous 
 straggling line of houses on either side. All around and behind were 
 fields and open country, and this applied to all the main roads out of 
 the metropolis. 
 
 A CouUNTRY TURNPIKE. 
 
 Turnpike gates or pikes, as they were colloquially called, were 
 more frequent the nearer one got to the towns; but the ugly rows of 
 bungalow huts, council buildings, and other monstrosities that border 
 our main roads to-day did not then spoil the landscape. 
 
 When we start down the roads themselves we shall notice this more 
 particularly, as we see each gate and many of the inns as they stood 
 at that time. 
 
 c 
 
18 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 The big posting-houses clustered together at more or less regular 
 intervals, at the six- to nine-mile stages, but we also had the smaller inns 
 and ale-houses dotted continuously along the roads, at many of which 
 drovers and their flocks were accommodated for the night. If we meet 
 a herd of cattle to-day it is unexpected, and we generally skid our car 
 into them; but when we remember that all cattle at that time came 
 alive and by road to feed the inhabitants of London, we can 
 understand the numbers of sheep and bullocks, etc., with which the 
 roads of the earlier part of the nineteenth century were littered. 
 
 Droves of 600 or 700 cattle often came down the North Road 
 from Scotland to be turned into food for the London populace, and 
 these black-polled cattle were always shod for their long journey, with 
 shoes something like a half horse-shoe, the Scottish drovers carrying 
 the shoeing irons for this purpose. 
 
 bE 
 4 = 
 ixt Vy Me aw © 
 i L 
 feces 
 ann nth Siplleel 
 ——— 
 
 TRAVELLERS FOR THE CHRISTMAS MARKET. 
 
 Droves of turkeys also walked from Norfolk and other counties in 
 order to catch the Christmas markets. I mean the owners wanted them 
 to be in time for Christmastide (I have my doubts about the turkeys 
 themselves). They had their feet dipped in pitch before starting, to 
 enable them to stand the wear and tear of the journey, which from 
 some parts of Norfolk took two months to complete. 
 
A PROLOGUE OF ATMOSPHERE 19 
 
 These flocks started in October in order to arrive in London for 
 Christmas, and I imagine that turkeys’ legs must then have wanted some 
 devilling before coming to table. As far as the turkey himself was 
 concerned, that was all the “Romance of the Road”’ he got. 
 
 Geese came in the same way, but the other poultry travelled 
 de luxe in crates, on the top of the roof, or slung underneath the slow 
 wagons; not much romance here either, I am afraid, for those in the 
 lower berth. 
 
 And last of all the dogs; and even they were different from the 
 show specimens of to-day, thank goodness. 
 
 a 
 
 ue 
 
 INS 
 
 Partly because your showman has already introduced you to his 
 canine helper, and also because he has a liking for dogs himself, some 
 of his friends of 1828 shall come up on to the platform, for they also 
 should picture in the ‘“‘Romance of the Road’’— 
 
 “MONGREL Puppy, WHELP AND HounpD, AND CurS OF Low DEGREE.” 
 
20 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 A prologue being but a preliminary performance, only a few of the 
 people we might meet can be paraded. And, as I read, the population 
 of England in 1828 was between twelve and thirteen millions, we can 
 only bring into the limelight a few samples. 
 
 The gentler sex (not to-day’s product) were robed like some of these 
 you now see before you; but in this attire what a serious undertaking 
 it must have been for them to get to the top of a coach !—the slightest 
 sign of an ankle making our great-grandmothers blush for the next five 
 miles of their journey. How they did it, I don’t know; and how, when 
 once up on the roof, they ever got down again without showing almost 
 as much leg as our modern womenfolk is another conundrum. 
 
 my 
 i I! 2 
 
 3 
 
 LADIES FROM DEVONSHIRE. 
 
 Nowadays, of course, legs are no treat to us. The roweé’s is a lost 
 art: in fact, there are no rowés to practise it, which one must presume 
 
 is a good thing. 
 
 Notwithstanding this, the rové wasn’t a bad old bird; 
 but your short frocks, my dears, have just shrivelled 
 him up, withered him and given him nothing 
 to discover. ‘‘Romance of the Road!!!’’ There 
 certainly isn’t any now; but let us get back to 1828, 
 when we had some roués, and here is one of them— 
 Old “Q,” the Marquess of Queensberry, who 
 really does look, and I believe was, a very bad old 
 man. I make no apology for introducing him here, 
 for surely it is the place he would most have loved. 
 
A PROLOGUE OF ATMOSPHERE 21 
 
 Ladies of those days were sadly behind the fashions, with the 
 exception of those living in London. ‘There was a strong line of 
 demarcation between country cousins’ dresses and those of their more 
 fortunate sisters whose parents had town houses. In town a lady 
 from Devonshire looked a lady from Devonshire, and not as she does 
 to-day—just like a breath from Paris. 
 
 Fashions took longer to filter through to the country towns and 
 villages; ladies’ fashion papers did not exist, and consequently there 
 were no advertisements or pictures to tell us exactly what woman wore 
 from the buff outwards. In this again our present-day picture papers 
 and advertisements have perhaps given a last extra flip to the Passing 
 
 of the Roué. 
 
 LADIES IN Town. 
 
 It was not so much on the roads that we met our womenfolk, 
 however; travelling had too many hardships ‘ 
 then to tempt many of them, at any rate TES ME 
 during the winter months. They simpered and A, cd 
 sighed, stayed at home, knitted their husbands’ 
 socks, and fashioned samplers, just as our young 
 folk of the female sex do to-day. 
 
 There seems to be a query about that last 
 remark, so perhaps, as he seems to be getting =! 
 rather out of his depth, it will be safest for ———__ 
 your showman to introduce you to some of his 
 male performers. Waar il??? 
 
22 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 Now, although from Oxford one sometimes hears rumours to the 
 contrary, our male is no doubt a very smart fellow, and by smart I 
 mean sartorially smart; but as competition is always good for any art, 
 your producer will allow one of his 1828 actors to appear with a 
 contemporary of our own times. 
 
 Both are people who helped in the “Romance of the Road,” but at 
 different periods. 
 
 They shall be introduced to you in the manner in which the 
 cinema captions have it. 
 
 A DANDY OF 1928 AND HIS CONFRERE OF 1828. 
 
 From these two exhibits it will at once be seen how comical was the 
 appearance of our forefathers as compared with the smartly dressed man 
 of to-day; and no further comment need be made about it. 
 
 The early part of the nineteenth century was the halcyon day of the 
 beaver hat, which now is an almost extinct breed. 
 
 A cubist’s picture of the road at that time would be a collection of 
 beaver hats, or a cubist impression of beaver hats—a feature so eminently 
 suited to his art—and to us of the twentieth century this quantity of 
 top-hats on the road would be a very arresting fact. 
 
 Squire, farmer, stage-coachman, innkeeper, traveller, labourer, 
 
 gamekeeper, tinker, tailor, butcher, baker and candlestick-maker— 
 they all wore the beaver hat. 
 They wore it in love and in sport, in travel, and of course to church. 
 
 They went shooting in it, they hunted in it, and fished and played cricket _ < 
 
 in it; and the only time they discarded it was when they went to bed— 
 when they always put on a nightcap in case their heads should miss it. 
 
A PROLOGUE OF ATMOSPHERE 8 
 
 Yes, the early part of the nineteenth century was the age of the 
 beaver hat, but even this hat had its waves of fashion in regard to brims, 
 curves, and the height of its crown. Once Sherman, the big coach 
 proprietor of the ‘“‘Bull and Mouth,”’ almost turned down a celebrated 
 coachman who applied to him for a job because his beaver did not 
 appear to him to have the horsey flatness of brim necessary at that 
 time for the profession of the driver of the mail. 
 
 The beaver, the side whiskers, the dark blue spotted stocks, high 
 collars to the coats, brass buttons, innumerable capes to our overcoats, 
 and tight unmentionables (as our forefathers called their trousers) with 
 straps under the instep to hold them in place, were the chief features of 
 their dress in 1828; added to which, when they travelled, they often 
 put on high, untanned gaiters reaching well up the thigh, or wore, 
 if they were obviously ‘“‘ from the country,” leathers and top-boots. 
 
 WEARERS OF THE BEAVER HaAt. 
 
 But once again let me parade a few of my male actors of the 
 road in order that you may inspect them before we start our first 
 night journey in the Bath Road mail. 
 
 Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, apothecary, ploughboy, thief; and 
 here let me mention that when you and I, farther on in my story, take 
 the road together we shall appear on the coaches in appropriate attire. 
 
 If you want to have an amusing time without 
 being conspicuous, when in Rome you do as Rome 
 does. When we go to Paris we do not—at least I 
 hope we do not—sit in the stalls of the Comédie 
 Francaise in plus-fours and sports coats; therefore, 
 as we are going down the road in 1828, we will 
 
24. THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 don the clothes and manners of that period, and so make ourselves 
 inconspicuous travellers. 
 
 We have now seen a few of the people, some inns and many of the 
 conveyances, and last but not least the dogs; but the hawkers, peep- 
 show man, the chair-mender, the old sailor, the earth-stopper, and the 
 butcher’s boy (whose prototype you may see on his shaggy Exmoor 
 pony in many a Devonshire village to-day), ought all to be brought into 
 the picture, as they were important side-shows of the road of the time. 
 
 ; Bid! 
 
 2 ONS 
 
 THE EARTH-STOPPER. ““YounGc LAMBS TO SELL.” THE BuTcHER’s Boy. 
 
 x nb -4 
 ae 
 
 = 
 
 NUK 
 
 ‘ RS 
 
 NY 
 + 
 ea 
 & NY 
 
 IN 
 
 THE OLD SAILor. 
 
 THE PEEP-SHOW Man, 
 
tea? to ‘PS gre RET Ae ee, ACS PTO oe Het Ra ee Sgn pee wa 
 
 “ee 
 
 oer oe 
 
 A PROLOGUE OF ATMOSPHERE 25 
 I have called this book The Romance of the Road, partly because 
 
 the road was romantic in those days and partly because, even in these 
 hustling times, every one of us has some romance still left somewhere 
 if we can only get down to it. 
 
 Even if you deal in figures all day long, or look at the world through 
 dry-as-dust folios and deeds, the romance is there in your hours of 
 relaxation if it can only be brought to the surface; and it is this that 
 I hope to do by driving with you down some of the mail-coach roads 
 of England one hundred years ago. 
 
 Fact can sometimes be romantic, often it is more romantic than 
 fiction. ‘The stacks of material, gleaned from the now unread books 
 and news-sheets of the period that lie before me, prove this in 
 many a page and chapter, but the difficulty of your showman is in the 
 elimination of matter to be included, and not in the quantity available. 
 
 To the student this immense crowd of material might have an 
 appeal; page after page of statistics as to coaches, mails, and the road 
 in general might be of interest to the few, but it would be intensely 
 dull to the many. Therefore, the blue pencil has to be ruthlessly used 
 if your peep-show is to be an entertainment and not a dry-as-dust 
 lecture, biography, anthology or index. 
 
 That, however, 1s always the object, and the work, of a producer in 
 any entertainment. If I try to wrap my facts up in the sweetened cake of 
 romance, I hope that they will still remain a story of the road of 1828. 
 
 History repeats itself, and to-day we have again the bitter war of 
 the road about to begin. 
 
 As steam drove the coaches off the road, so in a few, a very few, 
 more years will mechanical road traction drive steam off the map as 
 far as passenger traflic is concerned. 
 
 The same war is starting to-day that began in 1838 when the first mail 
 was sent by rail. As coaching was killed, so will the railways suffer, as 
 soon as every one possesses his own means of road transport and the 
 wealthy and adventurous travel by air. One hundred years hence, no 
 doubt, someone else will be writing a story about the quaintness of 
 travelling by trains and the ‘‘incredibly slow travelling” of sixty miles 
 
 an hour. I wonder? 
 . ( D 
 
; 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 
 = 
 - 
 rd 
 == 
 = 
 
 R@® 
 
 . FIVE! SIX!! SEVEN!!! EIGHT !!!! 
 
 struck the clocks of Piccadilly on Midsummer Eve in eighteen hundred 
 and twenty-eight. 
 
 Eight coachmen adjusted themselves on their box seats and gathered 
 up the reins, and eight guards hastily threw the last mail bags into 
 the hind boots of their respective coaches. 
 
 BANG! BANG!! BANG!!! 
 
 went the eight lids, and the western mails started slowly away from 
 the Gloucester Coffee Tavern in Piccadilly on their nightly journey 
 across England. 
 
 “Portsmouth,” “‘Bath,” ‘‘Exeter,”’ “Southampton,” “Gloucester,” 
 and “Stroud,” followed by “Devonport” and ‘Poole,’ moved off in 
 rapid succession; all, with the exception of “‘Portsmouth,”’ taking the 
 Bath Road as far as Hounslow or Maidenhead, where they spread 
 out in various directions, each mail taking the road which eventually 
 brought her to her final destination. 
 
 At the same hour many similar mail-coaches started from the 
 heart of the City of London. 
 
 “Edinburgh,” “Holyhead,” ‘‘Chester,’’ ‘“‘Manchester,” and 
 “Leeds” left London on the Barnet Road; “‘Hull,”’ “Louth,” and 
 “Wells”? (Norfolk) went through Hertford; ‘“‘ Norwich” and 
 “Yarmouth” travelled together on the Colchester Road; and 
 ‘‘ Hastings’ and “* Dover’’ were companions as far as New Cross 
 pike ; the remaining two, “Norwich”? (via Newmarket) and 
 ‘‘ Brighton,’ making lonely journeys through the night on their 
 respective highways. 
 
 Straight into the setting sun, now low on the horizon, the western 
 
 mails were driven, each boss and terret sparkling as they coyly peeped 
 
 out from either side of the shadows cast by the leaders’ heads. 
 26 
 
THE BATH ROAD 27 
 
 Coachmen beamed on their passengers, guards waved to acquaint- 
 ances and friends on the side walk, and even the horses seemed to feel 
 the joy of living and carried themselves with more gaiety than usual. 
 
 Click-clock! Click-clock! Click-clock! Clickerty-clockerty | 
 Clickerty-clockerty ! rang the sixteen iron-shod hoofs of each team as 
 they struck the granite stones of Piccadilly; while, to the music of the 
 tinkle of the pole chains of the wheelers, the clattering of the bars of 
 
 “To THE MusIC OF THE TINKLE OF THE POLE CHAINS.” 
 
 the leaders, and the hum and whirr-r-r of the four wheels—which 
 gave the bass accompaniment to this nightly orchestration of mail- 
 coaches—the three outside passengers congratulated themselves on the 
 beauty of the evening and the consequent pleasantness of their coming 
 journey. 
 
 The “Bath”’ mail, with its smart home-ground team (three chestnuts 
 and a grey), moved off behind ‘“ Portsmouth,” and as the horses felt 
 
28 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 their collars, on the rise towards Hyde Park Corner, one could make 
 the acquaintance of the broad-backed driver of the mail and the 
 narrow-backed passenger who sat beside him. The former takes 
 precedence, for he was the man at the helm. 
 
 O’er all his passengers he reigns as king ; 
 Yet unto every one is underling. 
 
 ‘“* Broadback ”’ looked what he was—a coachman, the driver of 
 the mail—and did not at all resemble the dapper driver of the 
 Quicksilver (“‘ Devonport ”’), who looked a gentleman and was one. 
 
 For coachmen of the latter sort, who wanted to do away with 
 _ bearing-reins and use patent safety hee instead of skids and breeching, 
 ‘‘ Broadback ”’ had very little use, for he had been brought up in a 
 school which relied on the wheelers to stop the coach by sitting into 
 the breeching. His was the rubicund mottled face which denoted 
 exposure to the weather at all times of the year, and the sinking sun 
 now facing him brought out the full flavour of its flaming colours of 
 orange and purple. Deep grooves and lines running in every direction 
 over it made it resemble a map of the roads and lanes through which he 
 took his nightly drive. Born and bred a coachman (his father before 
 him had carried His Majesty’s mails as a post-boy), he handled his 
 team like an artist as he sat on his raised seat on the off-side of the 
 coach. Quietness was his method of driving four horses, however 
 ill-assorted a team they might be, and even “‘ three blind ’uns and a 
 bolter”’ had no terrors for him or the passengers who knew him, when 
 once he had adjusted himself on the box seat. 
 
 When punishment was needed no driver could administer it more 
 quickly or more accurately than “‘ Broadback.’’ The point of his 
 thong was the quickest thing on the coach, and woe betide the near 
 leader or any other member of the team who was not doing his share 
 of the work. ‘Quietness and quickness” was his motto, with both his 
 reins and whip. He was never bustled and never in a bad hurry. He 
 learnt his apprenticeship in a hard school when coach horses were not 
 of the quality of the teams he now drove, days before the advent of 
 
 Telford and Macadam, when roads in winter were often axle- -deep 1 in | 
 
 ruts and it took two days to get from Oxford to London. 
 Then his wretched wheelers learnt to know the rattle of the ‘‘ Short 
 Tommy ” which had to be brought out to “ assist’ them in dragging 
 
 Ps 
 + 
 
+ . od i 
 
 _ “BROADBACK"” AND “NARROWBACK” 
 
ripe baALiy ROAD 29 
 
 their load up steep hills, and with which he or his passenger would 
 belabour them from the box seat. 
 
 Bad teams and deep ruts had now completely disappeared on all 
 turnpike roads, and this “‘ Short Tommy ”’ was a thing of the past; 
 but when he first became a driver it had been an unpleasant necessity 
 if he wished to get his coach to the end of the journey. 
 
 His white hat had the curl of the Regency bucks instead of the 
 smart coachman’s beaver of ’28 which had a brim as flat as a pancake. 
 His many chins were wrapped round with a blue bird’s-eye-spotted 
 scarf, which was tucked into one of the great-coats which he always 
 carried; the rest of this coat collection, in various degrees of age, 
 disrespectability and suitability for all kinds of climatic conditions, 
 being safely and warmly tucked away beneath his huge body, their 
 numerous capes often protruding like a hammer cloth over the back 
 of his box seat. 
 
 Under the light overcoat which he wore thrown open was seen the 
 red and gold of His Majesty’s livery, the wearing of which, by the 
 coachman—as we already know—plainly denoted that he had been 
 many years on the mail service, and was a trusted servant of both 
 ‘“ proprietors ’’ and the Post Office. He was almost the only driver 
 of the procession who wore this livery, of which fact he was very proud. 
 
 Long tan gaiters reached half-way up his thighs, almost covering 
 the strong cord breeches in which they were encased, while his boots 
 were of the description which denoted a leaning more to comfort 
 than to elegance. 
 
 Notwithstanding his knowledge of the inns on the road, he had 
 a great contempt for what he called ‘“‘the new beer shops ”’ which were 
 then springing up on all the turnpike routes. The old inn with its 
 archway entrance for his coach, and its snug bar parlour and coftee- 
 room for himself and his passengers, was what he most admired— 
 an inn where you could stay the night should you wish to do so, and 
 where the buxom landlady would herself see that all your wants were 
 attended to. 
 
 He knew the exact stone at which his coach should stop when he 
 came to the change, and roundly cursed the ostlers if the fresh team 
 were not waiting for him each night at this very spot. Leaders had 
 to be ready coupled together, wheelers fifteen feet behind them, with 
 
30 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 ‘THE OL_p INN HE Most ADMIRED.” 
 
 one horse on each side of the road, as, like a ship gliding up to the 
 quayside, he brought the body of his ooded to a standstill between them. 
 But two minutes he allowed for each change, his guard giving a helping 
 
 hand when he was not otherwise engaged with his Post Ofhce duties. — 
 
 He was rather fond of talking to his passengers and, although always 
 keeping an eye on his horses, would tell them many stories of the 
 road and give them advice as to the inns which they passed during the 
 night. 
 
 On his galloping stages he would generally hum a tune to himself 
 as he watched his team to see that the coach did not start ‘“‘rocking”’—a 
 dangerous proceeding which, unless care was taken to counteract it in 
 its initial stages, might end in disaster. 
 
 He could remember the time when the box seat was embedded in 
 the front axle tree and not attached to the body of the coach, and 
 when the less wealthy of his passengers sat in a basket contraption 
 which rested on the back axle tree, only the body of the coach being 
 then hung on springs. 
 
 rb 
 es 
 a . 
 ae, 
 a ee 
 hea 
 
 = 
 * 
 
THE BATH ROAD 31 
 
 To that celebrated M.F.H., Mr. John Warde of Squerries—who 
 from 1797 to 1808 rode over the Pytchley country as Master—he 
 always gave the salute with his whip, for he it was who persuaded the 
 proprietors and the Post Office to allow the coachman’s seat to be 
 attached to the body of the coach instead of to the front axle, an 
 innovation which added so much to the comfort of the drivers. Previous 
 to this alteration the continual jolting and vibration which the 
 coachmen received was supposed to prevent them falling asleep on 
 the journey; and I have no doubt, considering the deep ruts 
 encountered in the early days of coaching, it most certainly must 
 have done so! 
 
 It is quite possible that the Brobdingnagian proportions of our 
 friend’s figure were caused by so many hours of his life being passed 
 sitting on the box seat of a coach; but no doubt it was helped by 
 what he apparently thought was the dry nature of the English climate, 
 and the frequent libations at his favourite inns which seemed necessary 
 to counteract the effects of this atmospheric phenomenon. 
 
 To see him mount to his exalted seat on the box was a lesson in the 
 poetry of motion. He knew to an inch what swing to give to his 
 immense body as he moved each foot from hub to step and step to 
 footboard, and landed himself exactly over the seat prepared for him. 
 When driving his horses his huge back acted as a welcome protection 
 from the wind and weather to the traveller sitting behind him. 
 
 It has been said that a back view often shows as much character 
 as the reverse side of the picture. 
 
 The narrow back of the passenger who sat beside the driver perhaps 
 gave some key to the occupation of its owner. Not an athlete, and 
 certainly not a D’Orsay or an Adonis, he might have been taken for a 
 distinguished member of the Antiquarian Society, the proprietor of a 
 secondhand bookshop, or the editor of the Vew Spectator. 
 
 Old, short, wizened, with rather long, grizzled grey hair, he wore 
 a low-crowned Pickwickian top-hat which, in windy weather, he 
 made more secure upon his head by tying a bandana scarf completely 
 around it. Large horn-rimmed spectacles shaded his rather sunken eyes, 
 but his skin, plentifully covered with wrinkles, had none of the ruddiness 
 produced by being constantly exposed to the elements which charac- 
 terized the face of his companion on the box seat. Snuft-coloured 
 
<2 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 was his coat, snuff-coloured with 
 age was his hat, and snuff-coloured 
 was everything about him, the only 
 exceptions being his red woollen 
 muffler and the voluminous green 
 umbrella, without which he never 
 travelled. 
 
 A little vague, a little nervous 
 in his manner, but withal of an 
 inquiring and kindly nature, he had 
 a fund of information upon every 
 topic. 
 
 By the time the procession of 
 mails had passed Hyde Park 
 Corner, from which point the mile- 
 stones of the Bath Road began, a 
 serious start on their journey had 
 been made. 
 
 Straddled across the road, about 
 two hundred yards below St. 
 George’s Hospital, came the first 
 toll-gate, now thrown wide open to 
 allow “‘ Bath,” ‘“‘ Portsmouth,” and 
 the mails following to pass through. 
 
 Here, on the near-side, was 
 also the first of the watch-houses, 
 which, with their picturesque but 
 useless old watchmen, were to be 
 entirely superseded the following _ 
 year by the new top-hatted police 
 force. 2 
 
 Then came the White Horse Inn 
 and the Foot Barracks (demolished 
 in 1836 to make way for Bel- 
 gravia); after them the road crossed 
 the conduit which carried the 
 Westbourne, and then, with but a 
 
 Con oe ese ee) 
 Bath "Pox do 
 
 * De ay 
 Me Sark. 
 
 a 
 
 Sieh $$ 4, Ken€ 
 pre en Stouse 
 
THE BATH ROAD a3 
 
 few small houses in between, came the Rural Castle Inn, near Sloane 
 Street, with an archery ground behind it. 
 
 At this time Belgravia was not built, and the end of London was 
 at St. George’s Hospital and Apsley House. 
 
 The new gates had that year been erected at Hyde Park Corner, 
 and the brick wall from these ran past the toll-gate and behind the 
 houses and the Horse Barracks, when it again appeared at the road- 
 side and continued to Kensington Palace Gates. 
 
 From Sloane Street, continuing on the near-side, came the entrance 
 to the Brompton Road or Bell Lane, at which point “‘ Portsmouth ”’ 
 separated from the others to journey over Putney wooden bridge and 
 join the Portsmouth Road on Putney Heath, the other seven guards 
 giving her a few farewell notes on their horns to wish her good night. 
 
 At the juncture of Brompton Road with the highway stood Knights- 
 bridge Green, where another watch-house appeared, and also the usual 
 adjunct to village greens, a now disused pound. 
 
 Then followed three inns, the “‘ Marquis of Granby,” the ‘‘ Rose 
 and Crown,”’ with its big galleried yard, the “Old King’s Head,” and 
 a few smaller houses, and after this came open country and large 
 mansions and grounds. 
 
 From Hyde Park Corner, on the park side, after the toll-gate 
 was the weighing house, a row of houses, the Queen’s Head Inn, 
 Knightsbridge Chapel, and the White Hart Inn. In front of the inns 
 two or three old trees still flourished by the side of the highway ; and the 
 chapel, although acknowledged by a contemporary writer to be “a 
 hideous erection,’ had some interest about it. It was built in 1595, 
 originally as a lazar house, and a railed-off portion of Knightsbridge 
 Green was at one time the burial ground belonging to it. 
 
 The driver informed his passengers that this part of the road, from 
 Hyde Park Corner to the “ old court suburb ”’ of Kensington, had the 
 distinction of being the first piece of road outside London to be lighted 
 with glazed oil lamps: this was done on account of the numerous 
 footpads who frequented the area, and the consequent danger to the 
 public who journeyed after dark from the Court, when at Kensington, 
 to the town of London. 
 
 He could remember the time when a bell was rung at night at both 
 the Kensington and Hyde Park Gate ends in order to collect together 
 
 E 
 
34. THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 foot passengers who, for their own protection, wished to journey in 
 company on this portion of the highway. 
 
 Almost opposite Sloane Street was the Cannon Brewery (upon the 
 site on which the Albert Gate now stands), and a little farther on, 
 the Fox Inn, whose sign had been painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. 
 
 The pen-posts of the old cattle market were still dotted along 
 this portion of the route, and a few rows of houses and courts joined 
 up with the present Horse Barracks. 
 
 At this point the granite setts ended, and the brick wall of Hyde 
 Park once more lined the highway—one half-mile from Hyde Park 
 Corner. 
 
 And now, on the opposite side of the road, Rutland House, Kent 
 House and Kingston House were passed in rapid succession, into the 
 gardens of which the passengers had been able to see owing to their 
 elevated position on the coach top. 
 
 Rutland House had Lord Campbell as its tenant, although, as its 
 name suggests, members of the Manners family had at one time lived 
 in it. 
 
 In Kent House also once lived the Duke of Kent (the father of 
 Queen Victoria), before he moved into Kensington Palace. 
 
 But about Kingston House, both “‘ Broadback”’ and “ Narrow- 
 back’ had much to say. Built in 1769 for that sensational Court 
 figure, Elizabeth Chudleigh, it occupied the position upon which once 
 stood Paradise Row. 
 
 About the time it was erected, Elizabeth married the Duke of 
 Kingston, although, as it subsequently transpired, she was already the 
 wife of Augustus John Hervey, Earl of Bristol. (Incidentally our 
 coachman mentioned that Richard Tattersall, the founder of Tattersall’s 
 Yard, was at that time training-groom to the Duke.) 
 
 Elizabeth Chudleigh was descended from an old Devon family, 
 and was the daughter of a Colonel Chudleigh. At the age of eighteen 
 she obtained the post of maid of honour to the Princess of Wales, wife 
 of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and the mother of King George HI. 
 Soon after this Elizabeth became engaged to the Duke of Hamilton, 
 who was then about to undertake the grand tour. Whilst he was 
 away, however, Elizabeth met Captain Hervey, a son of the Earl 
 of Bristol, and Hervey fell desperately in love with her. The lady 
 
ie 
 tr 
 
 THE BATH ROAD 35 
 
 herself does not seem to have returned his passion, although 
 her aunt, whom she was then visiting, did all she could to advance 
 his suit. 
 
 It appeared that the aunt even went so far as to intercept the 
 Duke of Hamilton’s letters to his fiancée, and Elizabeth, piqued at the 
 Duke’s apparent neglect, accepted the pressing suit of Hervey and 
 consented to a secret marriage. This took place in the private chapel 
 of a friend’s house on August 4th, 1744. 
 
 But Hervey was not so successful as a husband as he had been as a 
 lover, and in a very short time his wife decided to have nothing more 
 to do with him. The secret marriage being still unknown at Court, 
 she was able to retain her position as maid of honour to the Princess 
 of Wales, and, as Hervey was very badly off, the salary she was receiving 
 from this appointment seems to have been a lever for forcing her 
 husband to continue to keep their union secret. 
 
 In the meantime the plot thickened, and the Duke of Hamilton, 
 still in love with Elizabeth, returned to England! 
 
 At once he pressed his suit on the lady, but, to his astonishment, 
 his advances were now treated with a coldness which he was unable 
 to understand. 
 
 In the end, thinking that his fiancée must have changed her mind 
 during his absence abroad, he gave up all further claims to her hand, 
 at a later date marrying one of the three beautiful Miss Gunnings. 
 
 Mrs. Chudleigh and her friends, not knowing of Elizabeth’s marriage, 
 thought her a fool, and told her so, but no whisper of her secret then 
 transpired, and so for the time being the matter ended. 
 
 At last things became so unendurable at home that the lady 
 determined to travel, and reaching Germany was received at the Court 
 of Frederick the Great, where she became extremely popular and 
 stayed for some time. 
 
 On her return to England ‘‘ Miss Chudleigh”’ (as she was still 
 known to the world) became the toast of the town and cynosure of all 
 eyes. Whether “ playing cards at Lord Chesterfield’s,” “acting at 
 Lady Harrington’s,”’ or appearing at one of the masked balls which 
 were then the fashion, her striking beauty and personality always 
 attracted attention. 
 
 A portrait of her in the costume (or rather want of it) in which she 
 
36 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 appeared at one of these balls, as Iphigenia, was at that time published 
 and (so we are informed) had a great vogue with the deaux of the town. 
 
 But poor Elizabeth had not yet got rid of her objectionable husband. 
 Wherever she went, wherever she might hide herself (which if truth be 
 told she does not seem to have attempted to do), Captain Hervey 
 was always somewhere at hand to throw a shadow over her gay life. 
 
 At last, worried to death with this continual skeleton in the cupboard, 
 she decided to tell everything to her mistress, the Princess of Wales. 
 Whether this was done or not does not seem very clear, but certain 
 it is that Elizabeth suffered from no loss of prestige at Court, and as 
 the notorious character of Captain Hervey was a byword at the time 
 I daresay she received a good deal of pity from her august patroness. 
 
 At this time, whether it was suggested to her or was evolved from 
 her own fertile brain, the idea occurred to her of getting rid of her 
 husband by destroying the evidence of the marriage in the church 
 register. Having gained access to this, she secretly tore out the leaf, 
 returned to London with it in her possession, and then bade open 
 defiance to her lawful spouse. 
 
 At this part of the story, however, Elizabeth’s character suffered 
 considerably. Some little time after the leaf had been extracted, 
 Captain Hervey unexpectedly succeeded to the Earldom of Bristol, and 
 the lady, no doubt thinking that she might as well become a countess 
 (having missed becoming a duchess), calmly went down to Winchester 
 and reinserted the leaf in the register, having no doubt previously 
 bribed the clerk and others necessary to enable her to carry out her plan. 
 Poor Elizabeth! Nothing seemed to go right with her, for, almost 
 immediately after she had established her claim to the title of Countess, 
 the Duke of Kingston came into her life, and she wished the register 
 and all connected with it at the bottom of the deep blue sea. 
 
 Marriage with the Duke was out of the question, but gossip says 
 that the lady, as she could not marry him, became his “‘ chére amie,” 
 and lived with him unblessed by the Church. 
 
 In a way, the Duke’s intentions were honourable, and after much 
 negotiating with Lord Bristol the latter agreed to waive all claims 
 on Elizabeth and to offer no opposition to his wife’s legal union with 
 the Duke. 
 
 It is difficult to understand how these three thought the legal and 
 
THE BATH ROAD 37 
 
 ecclesiastical sides of this union could be established, but there is no 
 doubt that the ceremony of marriage was performed on March 6th, 
 in 1769, between the Duke of Kingston and the Countess of Bristol, 
 her husband, the Earl of Bristol, being very much alive at the time. 
 
 For some few years, as Duchess of Kingston, and living at Kingston 
 House, Elizabeth became a leader of fashion, but in 1773 the Duke 
 died and troubles once more began to surround her. 
 
 After her so-called husband’s death, the Duchess travelled to 
 Italy and was entertained by the Pope and other influential Italians; 
 but while she was abroad a witness to her original marriage with Captain 
 Hervey (as he then was) turned up (exactly as they used to do in the old 
 plays at the Adelphi), and, being in reduced circumstances, applied to 
 the Duchess’s solicitor in London for help: in plain words, I expect, 
 threatened blackmail. 
 
 This help was refused; and Mrs. Craddock, the witness before 
 mentioned, immediately went to the late Duke’s relatives and told 
 them the whole story. Without more ado proceedings were commenced 
 by them against the absent Duchess, and Elizabeth, on hearing this 
 unpleasant news, at once hurried home. 
 
 On April rsth, 1776, the trial of the widowed Duchess of 
 Kingston, “for the crime of bigamously marrying Evelyn Pierrepont, 
 Duke of Kingston, her first husband, Captain Hervey, afterwards Earl 
 of Bristol, being then alive,” was commenced and continued for seven 
 days. Elizabeth was found guilty, but, pleading the privilege of the 
 peerage, was discharged ; instead of suffering the punishment for bigamy, 
 which at that time was transportation or imprisonment. 
 
 And now this little matrimonial jack-in-the-box had to put back 
 the clock and become known as the Countess of Bristol; and as very 
 strong efforts were being made, as she no doubt expected they would 
 be, to deprive her of all that the Duke of Kingston had left her in 
 his will, she was advised to leave the country. 
 
 But Elizabeth, having gone through life so far making dramatic 
 situations, could not make her last exit from English soil without 
 some striking pose. 
 
 In order to put the world off the scent, and wishing to leave England 
 secretly, she ordered her carriage, on the day of her departure, to be 
 driven through the fashionable parts of London as if flight was the last 
 
38 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 thing she contemplated. Also, to make secrecy more secure, she 
 invited a large party of friends to dine at Kingston House on that day, 
 who upon their arrival found an empty house and their hostess flown. 
 
 First at Calais, like so many of England’s defaulting creditors, 
 and afterwards near Paris, Elizabeth took up her abode; at the latter 
 place installing herself in an immense house which, we ae having to 
 state, was the property of the French King’s Gothes 
 
 Then comes her final dramatic end. After her flight, a lawsuit 
 had been pending about another estate which she had purchased, no 
 doubt with some of the Duke’s money, and, on hearing that the verdict 
 had been given against her, the lady flew into so violent a temper 
 ‘that she burst a blood-vessel and died from the result of it on 
 August 26th, 1796. 
 
 The story of her life was published at the time in two pamphlets 
 entitled ‘“‘ An Authentic Detail of Particulars Relative to the late 
 Duchess of Kingston”’ and ‘ Original Anecdotes of the late Duke 
 of Kingston and Miss Chudleigh,” published by Thomas Whitehead, 
 in the year 1792. 
 
 Elizabeth Chudleigh ! Countess of Bristol !! Duchess of 
 Kingston | | !|—we take off our hats to you—why, oh why has your 
 story never been given to us in play or picture? Truth is stranger than 
 fiction. No novelist or producer ever thought out a better plot, and 
 no playwright or actor ever had a more romantic character to depict. 
 
 On the opposite side of the road to Kingston House, and in the 
 wall of the Park, stood a padlocked gateway which “ Broadback ”’ 
 stated had always been known as the ‘‘ Duchess of Kingston’s Gate,” 
 and which, he understood, was a private gateway granted to the lady 
 by permission of the Regent when Prince of Wales; but the passenger 
 beside him afhrmed that it was much more probable that the gate, 
 and permission to use it, was granted by the former Prince of Wales, 
 Frederick Lewis (son of George II, who died in 1772, the year before 
 the Duke of Kingston), to whose wife Elizabeth was a maid of honour 
 for so many years. 
 
 Be that as it may, the gate was there—the house was there—and 
 the Duchess of Kingston was certainly for a short period there; but 
 in the year of which I am writing the owner was the Earl of Listowel, 
 who purchased it when he was Viscount Ennismore. 
 
oe 
 
 THE BATH ROAD 39 
 
 And then on this park side of the road, all alone with its sinister 
 reputation, stood the Halfway House Inn. 
 
 Here we had a remnant of past days, of the mud, mire, and highway- 
 men of this part of the road, a house that once was the gazebo and 
 meeting house of ‘‘ gentlemen of the road.” 
 
 It was here that the highwaymen’s touts forgathered, ready to 
 send word to Hounslow Heath and other notorious places on the , 
 
 “Att ALONE WITH ITS SINISTER REPUTATION.” 
 
 western roads when wealthy families or merchants were starting on 
 a journey; and here it was that the father of our coachman, when a 
 post-boy in 1740, was robbed by highwaymen, his assailants getting 
 away with both his horse and the Bath and Bristol mail-bags. 
 
 From Kent House one came to Kensington Gore, ‘“ the second 
 from the left, with white stucco over the front,’’ being the house once 
 occupied by John Wilkes. He was the London alderman, and M.P. 
 for Aylesbury, who in 1763 was arrested and committed to the Tower 
 for libelling the King, while his paper, the orth Briton, was 
 publicly burnt by the hangman. The reason for this was that he had 
 charged the King with uttering ‘“inexactitudes”’ in his speech. Wilkes 
 was arrested on a “general warrant ’’—a warrant which did not 
 specify the name of the accused, and which was subsequently declared 
 
40 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 Joy We pi 
 
 Hose 
 
 oe © rn 
 0 a aan 
 
 a3 SS tite 
 
 a Pe fs 
 th Gmpasses /on 
 Go Shen Tans Ino 
 SG" ques of Graney Jt 
 cede GGueey 10 
 
 ae ogee ato, 
 gic of Sipe ely eed & ae 
 
 me shoal es' ts 
 
 ensing(9p 
 : . me 
 
 ee ae vee. on 
 ay “yaut dfouse. a ase 
 
 } eovoss sfer,. 2 
 
 by Parliament to be illegal. On 
 December 6th, 1763, he re- 
 ceived £5,000 damages, and 
 was made Lord Mayor of Lon- 
 don in 1774. The following 
 year an obelisk was erected to 
 him in Fleet Street, at the top of 
 Bridge Street; a man of many 
 vicissitudes, both amorous and 
 financial, he died a bankrupt 
 in 1797. We have often had his 
 prototype in our own times. 
 Gore House was opposite 
 the first milestone from Hyde 
 Park Corner, and stood upon 
 the site upon which the Albert 
 Hall now stands. It had had a 
 variety of tenants—owners both 
 grave and gay, for in succession 
 it had housed a miserly finan- 
 cier, a great philanthropist, and 
 a talented, but I fear—God bless 
 her !—a somewhat frail beauty. 
 Of the first, named Morgan, 
 it was said that with an income 
 of £10,000 a year he never 
 spent one penny on the house, 
 and when the good William 
 Wilberforce, of Abolition-of- 
 Slave-Trade renown, succeeded 
 him in 1808, the property was 
 in a very bad state of repair. 
 Here Wilberforce lived until 
 1823, when the beautiful Lady 
 
 Blessington, who was then a 
 
 widow, became the subsequent 
 tenant. With her at that time 
 
vt 
 
 THROUGH THE OPEN TOLL-GATE 
 
 » ». 
 
|G 
 a4 
 
 saan 
 
 g 
 2 
 = 
 . 
 = 
 I 
 
? 
 
 Lipweeo A Lie ROALD 4I 
 
 lived Count D’Orsay, one of my puppets who has already appeared 
 in picture on page 22 of my story, and here for some time forgathered 
 many of the most brilliant men of the period. In 1849 the usual désacle 
 of the owners of houses of this part of the Bath Road took place, for 
 in April of that year Count D’Orsay and Lady Blessington were 
 besieged by creditors in Gore House, and a sheriff’s officer put in an 
 execution and took up his unwelcome abode with them. 
 
 D’Orsay fled to France, the lady quickly following him, but she 
 died of heart disease one short month after her arrival on French soil. 
 
 The Duchess of Kingston (or Countess of Bristol), Lady Blessington, 
 and John Wilkes all seemed to have met the same financial fate 
 within a few years, and all lived in houses almost touching each other. 
 
 It was just about here, too, that some two years earlier the Reading 
 coach had been overturned on its way to the Bolt-in-Tun Inn, 
 Fleet Street. The Times of March 7th, 1826, commenting on the 
 accident which had been caused by a wheel coming off, suggested that 
 “Some official ought to be employed to examine the wheels of all 
 public carriages at every stage”’’; but I don’t think this wise advice 
 was ever taken. 
 
 At Hogmire Lane (Gloucester Road) the mails passed through 
 the second toll-gate of the Bath Road, and just below it stood the 
 barracks for troops connected with the Kensington Palace Guard. 
 
 Then began the cluster of inns and taverns which marked the 
 entrance to Kensington, with Young Street—leading to Hell Corner 
 and Kensington Square—on one side, and Kensington Church, with 
 the stocks still in front of it, on the other. Young Street was named 
 after the builder of Kensington Square, who lived in the time of William 
 and Mary. Kensington House, with its high wall all round it, was, 
 in the time of Charles II, the country house of the notorious Louise 
 de Querouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth, but in 1828 it was occupied 
 by a Mrs. Inchbald. In after years Baron Grant built his enormous 
 house on this site. 
 
 At the King’s Arms Tavern the granite setts again began and 
 continued through Kensington—a welcome relief after the dust of that 
 portion of the road which ran from the Horse Barracks to Kensington 
 Palace: 
 
 The coachman then driving the Bath mail, and he alone of the 
 
 F 
 
42 ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 twenty-seven mail drivers, had permission to use the King’s private roads, 
 i.e. the King’s private road in Hyde Park and the one from the Queen’s 
 palace (Buckingham Palace) to Putney. Although not always availing 
 himself of this permission, he would proudly tell his passengers how 
 and why it had been granted to him. 
 
 King George IV, when staying at one of his country palaces, 
 was sometimes provided by the Post Office with a mail coach, and 
 being specially pleased with one of the drivers gave him a pass to 
 enable him to use the Royal private roads at any time. 
 
 A record of this may still be found among the Post Office archives. 
 
 After Kensington Church the street narrowed considerably, and 
 here, when the eight o’clock mails went through, the trafhc became 
 very congested—stage-coaches, post-chaises, horsemen and travelling 
 chariots, as they hastened London-wards in order to get to town 
 before darkness set in, meeting the mail coaches in one continuous 
 stream. 
 
 The slow-moving stage-wagons and market carts, as they plodded 
 on their way, also impeded the coaches’ “ incredibly fast travelling ” 
 of ten miles an hour. 
 
 The smell of the road and the noise of the rumble of many whee 
 rolling over the granite stones filled the air in this narrow part of the 
 way at all times of the day, but on a summer’s evening when the seven 
 out-going mails met the in-coming trafic Kensington was in truth a 
 busy village. 
 
 A story was told in connection with Coleby Hone facing Ken- 
 sington Palace Gates, which had just been passed—a story with a 
 moral like so many stories of that period, showing the futility of thinking 
 too much of this world’s goods. 
 
 Sir Thomas Coleby, a Commissioner in the Victualling Office, 
 built Coleby House in the year 1720, and died intestate, pa 
 £200,000 in the Funds. 
 
 In the manner of his death, however, we get the moral, for a writer 
 of the time recorded that Sir Thomas a rising in the addi of the 
 night when he was in a very proper sweat, the effect of medicine which 
 he had taken for that purpose, and walking down stairs to look for the 
 key of the wine cellar which he had inadvertently left on the table in 
 his parlour, being apprehensive that his servants might seize a bottle 
 
THE BATH ROAD 43 
 
 of port wine,” fell dead—and neither his wine nor his money were 
 of any further use to him. The moral of which so obviously is, that 
 it is better for a rich man to allow his servants to drink a bottle of his 
 port wine than to rise in the middle of the night when “in a very 
 proper sweat, the effect of medicine,’’ to prevent the possibility of 
 them doing so. 
 
 | 
 
 Ss HD 
 ESNSS Pst 
 SN 
 
 \ 
 
 i 
 i 
 
 ll i 
 
 ? 
 
 ¥ “iil un ar > Wf 
 ip; i \ ! = < } LMM / 
 Y 1! ae l High ff 
 lef WY = 4 = a YG 1 =f 7 
 CERN Meriannnin | . : 
 
 I 
 
 | (i a ie | ae | 
 | Nap Sa a 
 \' i 4 ee ie im 
 
 <i 
 
 Str THOMAS COLEBY ‘‘ RISING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT.” 
 
 Almost at the end of Kensington, just as one reached Holland 
 Park, stood Kensington Toll Bar, the third gate on the Bath Road, 
 with Earl’s Court Lane just beside it. 
 
 Edwardes Square, named after the Edwardes family who lived in 
 Holland House in 1767, was in process of being built; then came 
 Earl’s Terrace, with lodges at either end, and after that the open 
 country with only a few houses until one reached Counters Bridge 
 (Addison Bridge), which spanned the Stamford Brook on its way to 
 the Thames at Chelsea. 
 
 On the other side of the road, after Holland House, was the 
 
44. 
 
 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 - . 
 a 
 
 Pad 
 ya cray hs 
 pews 
 
 : =} 
 
 a Te 
 ro gy den § Aeopre 
 i; dept. Sn 
 
 White Hart Tavern, and then again 
 country and nursery gardens as far 
 as Hammersmith turnpike. 
 
 Holland House was built by 
 Sir Walter Cope in 1607 and took 
 its name from his son-in-law, 
 Henry Rich, Earl of Holland, 
 who, in 1649, “‘suffered death upon 
 the scaffold for participating in the 
 last attempt to restore King Charles 
 upon the throne.” 
 
 Addison became possessed of 
 the house in 1716 when he made 
 his unhappy marriage with the 
 Dowager Countess of Warwick and 
 Holland, and died in it in 1719. 
 
 After this the house went to the 
 Edwardes family, who sold it to a 
 Henry Fox who made the wonder- 
 ful gardens and built a theatre in 
 its grounds. 
 
 This owner made a runaway 
 marriage with the Duke of 
 Richmond’s eldest daughter, which, 
 unlike most runaway marriages, 
 seems to have turned out to be a 
 lifelong love match. In 1763 he 
 was created Baron Holland, and 
 died at Holland House eleven years 
 later. 
 
 It was in these grounds the 
 famous duel between Lord Camel- 
 ford and Mr. Best was fought, and 
 the former killed. ; 
 
 To the White Hart Tavern, 
 Addison, when in possession of 
 Holland House, would often repair 
 
THE BATH ROAD 45 
 
 to drown his sorrows, and at the “‘ Adam and Eve” opposite was 
 still preserved a long bill, which he ran up before living at Holland 
 House, which Lord Holland had in the end to pay. 
 
 Just over Counters Bridge stood Hammersmith turnpike, and 
 beside it the Bell and Anchor Inn, at which many coaches stopped 
 for their first halt out, or last stop in, when entering or leaving London. 
 
 At this house the driver, for the ostensible reason of “‘ delivering 
 a small parcel,” pulled in. The rather extraordinary part of this 
 proceeding was that, without any order being given and almost before 
 the wheels of the mail had stopped revolving, a huge tray of flowing 
 bowls appeared, which were immediately handed up to those who 
 required them, to counteract, one presumes, the effect of the dust 
 between Kensington and Hammersmith turnpikes. 
 
 In these days of tarmac roads no one except the most confirmed 
 drinker ever gets thirsty on a journey; but what a godsend the dust 
 (then supplied by Mr. Macadam) must have been to the innkeepers 
 on the roads of 1828! 
 
 _ Even on this short journey from Hyde Park Corner to Hammersmith 
 it was agreeable, nay, even a necessity, to have some liquid refreshment 
 in the cool of a summer’s evening. 
 
 In those days there were certain houses at which the drivers of 
 public conveyances always stopped, and others at which slow wagons, 
 drovers, and flock-masters always pulled in; each type of vehicle and 
 traveller having their own house of call along the route. 
 
 “The Bell and Anchor ”’ was one of those houses much patronized 
 by the better class of road conveyance, and it was as much part of the 
 ritual of his nightly drive for “‘ Broadback”’ to pull up to deliver 
 this fictitious ‘‘ small parcel ’’ as it was for him to catch up the thong 
 of his whip at starting or to look at the coupling buckles of the reins 
 of each fresh team. 
 
 A little farther on, on the near side of the way, stood the picturesque 
 Red Cow Inn, which, at a later date, was a favourite haunt of Charles 
 Keene, the Punch artist, and which has many times been made 
 the subject of sketches and pictures. It was here also that a similar 
 robbery of the mail to that of the ‘‘ Halfway House ”’ took place, but 
 this time the thieves secured the two mail-bags from the post-boy’s 
 pony while he was refreshing himself inside the inn. 
 
46 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 THE RED Cow InN, HAMMERSMITH. 
 
 Next door to this inn stood “ Fairlawn,” the house of Dr. Burney, 
 which in 1828 was an important house on the Bath Road and at that 
 time a school. Dr. Burney was a great classical scholar, and on his 
 death in 1817 his library was purchased by the nation and is now 
 housed in the British Museum. 
 
 So far, I am afraid the saying, “‘ His Majesty’s mail waits for no 
 man,” is being very badly exemplified by what must seem our rather 
 slow progress, and we must pass on through this land of inns, schools, 
 and academies, leaving on our left the road to the new suspension 
 bridge at Hammersmith Broadway, where the forge and smithy stood, 
 and travel on, only noticing a passage-way which runs up between 
 the George Inn and the “‘ Sussex Arms,” to which our driver with a 
 knowing wink has drawn attention. 
 
 Up this passage, near the old Meeting House at Hammersmith, 
 was a rather large house, surrounded, like the Duchess of Portsmouth’s 
 house, by a very high wall—but perhaps, as coachmen’s gossip is rather 
 nearly akin to backstairs gossip, the story should not be told... . 
 even Royal families are but human beings, and it was rumoured— 
 with how much truth I am not prepared to say—that certain charming 
 
THE BATH ROAD 47 
 
 ladies living in this secluded spot were 
 occasionally visited by a Royal personage 
 in a somewhat private-individual way. 
 
 For some reason never yet explained, 
 a coachman’s ruddy face seems able to put 
 more expression into a wink than anyone 
 else’s, so perhaps the rest of this story had 
 best be left to the imagination of my readers. 
 One hopes, however, that this one little 
 scandal of Hammersmith Broadway was not 
 allowed to leak out among the surrounding 
 academies and young ladies’ seminaries 
 which housed and educated the prim little 
 misses of that period. 
 
 Cromwell’s Brewery, in Hammersmith’s 
 narrow street, was of course pointed out as 
 a very important local industry; and later 
 on, on the near side of the road, also Cromwell House, which was the 
 home of James and not O/iver Cromwell; James being the founder of 
 the above-mentioned business. He it was, so ‘“‘ Broadback ”’ told, who 
 started life by himself taking round on a barrow the beer which he 
 had brewed, but who died worth a very large sum of money. 
 
 His death took place at the good old age of seventy-five, and was 
 caused by being “‘ overtaken by a seizure’ while riding his old horse 
 home from Mark Lane in the City of London. 
 
 Near Cromwell House is Paddenswyck, or, as Roque’s map (1741) 
 has it, Paddingwick Park, but which we know as Ravenscourt Park. 
 It was then a very old house which had once had a moat surrounding 
 it. Behind the house was Starch Green, where the gibbets stood, and 
 where in 1828 the inhabitants bred rabbits, out of which they 
 seemed to make a considerable income by selling them to the London 
 markets. 
 
 On the west side of Paddenswyck or Paddingwick was a village 
 which, if only on account of its name of Goggle Goose Green, should 
 be recorded. Goggle Goose Green! What a fairy-tale rhythm it has, 
 and how it will please our grandchildren! Fancy telling the story 
 of the ‘‘ Witch of Goggle—Goose—Green” to the Christmas group 
 
48 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 of grandchildren round your 
 ancestral fireside! Think of the 
 “08 widely opening eyes of expectation 
 and excitement as you roll out 
 the name of Goggle—Goose— 
 Green ! 
 
 The story shall some day be 
 told. It might be squeezed into 
 this volume as a “* Romance of the 
 Road,”’ but it would be a little out 
 of place to tell to ‘‘ Broadback ” 
 and ‘‘ Narrowback’’ even in the 
 dusk of the evening; so for that 
 reason its telling must be post- 
 poned. 
 
 Near this Green, on the 
 opposite side of the way, is the 
 avenue of elms leading to the gates 
 of Chiswick House, the seat of the 
 Duke of Devonshire. Sir Walter 
 Scott, when visiting here in the 
 year of our story, was “ mightily 
 amazed’? at the wild animals kept 
 in the park: the kangaroos, elks, 
 emus, and the Indian cattle cows 
 that were browsing on the lawn, 
 to say nothing of the African 
 elephant which was led about the 
 grounds by an attendant. 3 
 
 At the farther end of Turnham 
 Green stood the ‘“‘Old Pack 
 Horse,’ where Horace Walpole 
 always baited when riding from 
 Strawberry Hill to London; and 
 ee almost opposite this we passed 
 oes fess chee. the juncture of the old western 
 road to London through Tyburn 
 
 io Mue 
 p stn 
 , Torn ham Grodin 
 i One uct hacselt 
 P 
 
 ‘ 
 40 “ 
 
 w eee ~ 
 London .®: 
 ICE hg Grae 
 
 e-*? 
 
 "aS"; star § Garter 
 22299, $94 
 Ba 
 
 Sy ipson Green 
 Dye Megpes 
 fag 
 
 pw OmiLe 
 Be ORE 
 
. 
 | 
 | 
 . 
 | 
 | 
 
 THE BATH ROAD 49 
 
 Gate, which at this point joined issue with the one upon which the 
 coaches then travelled. | 
 
 Once free from the traffic of Kensington and Hammersmith and 
 the fascinating purlieus of Paddingwick Park and Goggle Goose Green 
 (dear old Goggle Goose Green, I hate to leave you), we journeyed 
 more rapidly down the road to Bath. 
 
 From here onwards our accompanying maps shall be drawn to 
 ten miles to the page instead of the one-and-a-half miles scale which 
 we have been forced to do if we wished to include all the places and 
 inns we passed when getting out of London. 
 
 London Stile, a well-known coaching landmark of 1828, was 
 where the new arterial Great West Road now leaves the old Bath 
 Road, and just past it was the Star and Garter Inn at Kew Bridge. 
 
 After passing the turning for Kew and Richmond, we entered 
 the narrow cobbled street of the village of Brentford, which once 
 more relieved the mail passengers from the unwelcome accompaniment 
 
 AN INN YARD, HOUNSLOW. 
 
590 
 
 Swe 
 
 —— 
 
 i # se 
 SY YIFI—.B srone 
 
 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 + 6MiLe 
 3339) 
 29-99 fe: 
 
 wat Mike 
 STONE 
 
 onl >) MILE 
 eee Prone 
 
 of dust, which began again as soon 
 as the mails passed over the Grand 
 Junction Canal. 
 
 Syon House, belonging to the 
 Duke of Northumberland, and 
 Osterley Park, the summer home 
 of the Earl of Jersey, were left 
 behind, and the mail arrived at 
 Mr. Chaplin’s stables at Hounslow, 
 where 100 horses were kept, and 
 where the first change took place. 
 
 Here, at Hounslow, three of 
 our attendant coaches left the Bath 
 Road; ‘‘Southampton,”’ “Poole,” 
 and ‘‘ Devonport” wishing “‘ Bath”’ 
 good night as they passed, while 
 “Stroud,” ‘“‘Gloucester’’ and our- 
 selves took the half-right turn 
 across the heath to ““ The Magpies,” 
 King’s Arbour and Colnbrook. 
 
 Hounslow, a long, straggling, 
 uninteresting village, was chiefly 
 supported by the road; a village of 
 inns and posting-houses and capable 
 of stabling many thousand coach- 
 and post-horses. At this time one 
 hundred and seventy coaches passed 
 through Hounslow daily. 
 
 As far back as 1650 it was 
 noted for the number of its inns 
 
 and ale-houses, but in 1828 the 
 
 George Inn was the largest and 
 most important posting-house. 
 Leaving Hounslow, past 
 Butcher’s Grove, the mail had 
 Hounslow Heath, with its un- 
 pleasant reputation for highwaymen, 
 
THE BATH ROAD 51 
 
 on the left, with hardly a house or habitation 
 until Sipson Green was reached. 
 
 Over Cranford Bridge, past ‘‘ The 
 Berkeley Arms” and “The King’s Arbour” ; 
 which latter was a stable used exclusively 
 for His Majesty’s post-horses when travelling 
 between Windsor Castle and London. 
 
 At Longford, about one mile from 
 Colnbrook, “‘ Broadback”’ had apparently 
 another “‘ small parcel to deliver,” for the 
 mail was brought to a standstill under the 
 three trees which stood sentinel outside 
 MeuiceKino’s Head.” As at * The Bell 
 and Anchor,” at Kensington, so at “‘ The 
 King’s Head,” this “‘ parcel to deliver”’ was 
 evidently a nightly affair, for Peggy Bedford, 
 the landlady, was herself awaiting us with 
 another large tray of liquid refreshment in pone ADEE EORD. 
 readiness for the passengers on the mail. 
 
 And then on past ‘‘The Magpies”? and over the Coln River the 
 coach travelled, until it arrived at the narrow street of Colnbrook, 
 seven and a-half miles from Hounslow. 
 
 A flat and uninteresting stage, but a portion of the road where 
 time could be made up by galloping. 
 
 As the team rattled along the old town’s narrow streetway, the 
 heavily timbered Ostrich Inn gave welcome from its lighted windows. 
 
 This ‘‘ Ostrich,” however, was not always a very hospitable bird. 
 Many years before the house had had a very different reputation, for 
 here many murders were committed, the victims being chiefly wealthy 
 merchants travelling with their merchandise between Bath, Reading, 
 and London. 
 
 It is an old story—but because there is a grim humour about it, it 
 shall be told once more. 
 
 In the fourteenth century ‘‘ The Hospice” (now ‘Ostrich ’’) was 
 very much used by these travellers, and some sixty of them, after 
 staying at the inn, mysteriously disappeared and were never heard 
 of again. 
 
52 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 One Thomas Cole (the sixty-first victim) had been for some time 
 ear-marked by the landlord and his amiable spouse for conversion into 
 beer, or, more truthfully, zmersion into the brew-house boiling vat, 
 which, by a sinister coincidence, was conveniently placed immedi- 
 ately below the Blue Room bedstead. It was upon this bed (so it 
 was discovered afterwards) that all the sixty victims had slept their 
 last sleep. 
 
 “To EMmPpTy THE VICTIM INTO THE VAT BELOW.” 
 
 Thomas, although he had many times stopped at “‘ The Ostrich,” 
 had been difficult to lure into this cosy little room. On one occasion 
 he had brought a friend with him; on another he had been detained 
 at Maidenhead on business about a dog; or had decided that no other 
 than the Pink, Yellow or Green rooms would suit his requirements. 
 It just seemed as if Thomas were to lead a charmed life. 
 
 But at last, one night, when he was carrying a considerable — 
 amount of specie with him on returning from London to his home 
 at Reading, he was persuaded to use the Blue Room bed. 
 
THE BATH ROAD 53 
 
 Now, this Blue Room bed stood on a trap door, which, by releasing 
 a bolt underneath, could be made to empty the victim into the boiling 
 vat below; and our fourteenth-century friend, having in all probability 
 wined himself well before retiring, was duly precipitated into this vat, 
 being found some days afterwards floating in the river. 
 
 One or two murders did not much matter in those days, but making 
 a hobby of it—this being the sixty-first—brought the landlord and land- 
 lady under the steely glance of the law. Both were arrested, tried, 
 hanged, drawn and quartered, according to tradition, after making a 
 full and complete confession of the whole of the murders. 
 
 At Thomas Cole-in-the-Brook the mail changed horses, but mo 
 at “‘ The Ostrich,” whose beer, so ‘‘ Broadback ”’ asserted, still had a 
 different flavour from that of any other brew in the town. 
 
 After passing Colnbrook the continuous stream of market carts 
 with their sleeping drivers, which had been met since Hounslow, 
 almost ceased, and only a few late travellers on the road stirred up 
 the dust on the King’s highway, now settling to rest for the night. 
 
 The Old Crown Inn at Slough, where Mrs. Catherine Hazell held 
 sway, was the best place to stop in the town, and if we pass it to-day 
 in our car we see it in almost the same state as it was when “‘ Broad- 
 back” drove the mail past it, a typical example of the old coaching 
 and posting-house inn. 
 
 Catherine Hazell can never welcome us again. No more will 
 the driver of the mail pull up for a “‘small parcel to deliver”; but the 
 old house still wears its coaching overcoat at any rate, and, as we 
 glide in our mechanical motor on to the cross roads facing it, we feel 
 that we surely are the people who should not be in the foreground of 
 its picture. 
 
 Most of the stage-coaches stopped at Salt Hill, just outside the 
 town of Slough, where the Castle and Windmill Inns were the two 
 largest. 
 
 The mail changed at the Bear Inn at Maidenhead, at the bottom 
 of the High Street, a house kept by a well-known coach proprietor, 
 W. H. Waddell, whom we have referred to before in our prologue 
 in connection with Charlie Holmes and his testimonial; and at 
 Maidenhead, ‘‘ Narrowback,”’ like ‘‘the man from Cook’s,” imparted 
 a little guide-book information. 
 
54 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 ‘The Noble Bridge was erected 
 in 1771’ (from designs of Sir 
 Robert Taylor) “costing, apart 
 from the land contiguous, 
 {19,0008 
 
 It also appeared from records 
 which had apparently been studied 
 that “‘In the reign of Edward III 
 the town was called Maydenhythe, 
 on account of its large wharf on the 
 river. When the first bridge was 
 thrown across the Thames at this 
 Ses oo spot in 1297 the name no doubt 
 began to alter, gradually becoming 
 oy Maidenhead Hee the hythe itself 
 ied a was done away with.” 
 eee Py : A list of its inns, which the mail 
 Seog} OE passed by, may not be out of place 
 here, as the names of some of the 
 landlords of that time are familiar 
 to us to-day. 
 
 Rick 9770995 a 
 
 ee 1 PAQ.. ne = 
 / 
 
 nea f o Br. 6 
 L-; oe ee oe ‘er 
 ; mG ' Sadenhead 4 
 
 NE 
 
 st S0arden cad 
 : cine . 
 
 vite oN 
 
 Lae 
 FG soe Gi ae A nowl Hill 
 pea ae oS Kiln Green 
 9 sri SMO7 
 “4 STONE 
 
 The Inns of Maidenhead in 
 1828. : 
 ‘The Orkney Arms,’’ Maidenhead 
 Bridge. . . William Skindle 
 ‘The Bear,’ High Street 
 William H. Waddell 
 ‘Red Lion,” High Street a 
 Richard Lovegrove __ 
 ‘“Saracen’s Head,” High Street 
 Izaac Bailey 
 ‘“The Sun” (post-horses), High 
 Street... . . Richard Tage 
 
 i ea 5 ee dhs ‘The White Hart,” High Street 
 a a NRE 
 John Russell 
 
 2 MILE 
 ; he ONE 
 
isa) 
 O 
 xq 
 oe 
 icp) 
 oe) 
 Sq 
 a 
 oa 
 > 
 ea 
 eal 
 en 
 ap 
 
y* 
 
 THE BATH ROAD Ge 
 
 A 
 
 = 
 
 = 
 = 
 = 
 ge 
 ZF 
 eee 
 
 —o 4 
 
 a 
 
 nef 
 
 THE OLD Crown INN, SLOUGH. 
 
 _Even in 1792 Archibald Robertson wrote: “‘At the end of Maiden- 
 head Bridge stands an excellent inn, where travellers are well accom- 
 modated and parties often resort together for the amusement of fishing,”’ 
 adding, “‘ and other recreations in the summer months.” 
 
 Well! well! well! We used to go to dear old “‘ Skindle’s” in our 
 callow youth, but I am glad Mr. Robertson in 1792 added that note 
 about “ other recreations.”’ 
 
 When the mail passed through Maidenhead at 11.25 each night 
 its paved High Street was quiet; but every hour of the day stage-coaches 
 rattled over its stones, and endless streams of post-chaises, horsemen and 
 wagons, on their way to and from Bath, jostled and crowded together 
 in its narrow roadway. 
 
 The Bear Inn was the principal inn of coaching times. 
 
 At the beginning of Maidenhead Thicket, the ‘Stroud’ and 
 ‘Gloucester’ coaches bade good night to the Bath mail, and 
 took the right-hand road to Henley, but ‘ Broadback’s’’ coach 
 travelled on across the thicket by Little Wick Green to the village 
 of Hare Hatch, by Mr. Girdler’s house and Scarlett’s, the home 
 of the Lee Parrotts, until Twyford was reached, where at the King’s 
 
 Arms Inn another change of horses was made. 
 
56 THE ROMANCE 
 
 ar 
 PAPA 
 
 ; 
 
 rie! 
 : : 
 a 
 
 94 
 
 ; seoter GA 
 art gl 
 << ® " S6MILE 
 _ 29... 92 stone 
 ha iis 
 
 nD. eI MIKE. 
 ie igre erone 
 \ 
 
 <¥ 49 MILE 
 8 STONE 
 
 ® 
 dot moor Green 
 
 { 
 ¢ 
 
 “>. Gravel Fits 
 
 OF THE ROAD 
 
 After this she crossed the 
 Lodden River and then along 
 the tree-bordered road which 
 brought her to the top of the 
 hill above Reading, from which 
 in the daytime the first view 
 of the town was obtained. 
 
 Rattling down this hill to 
 where the Oakingham Road 
 (now Wokingham) joined the 
 Bath turnpike, she came to the 
 outskirts of the town. 
 
 But Reading in those days 
 was not the biscuit town it is 
 to-day, although at the top of 
 London Street, and almost 
 opposite that busy coaching- 
 house, the Bear Inn, stood 
 the original home of Huntley 
 and Palmer’s factory, a small 
 and picturesque confectioner’s 
 shop. 
 
 When the Bath mail passed 
 it, in 1828, at 1.90 ame 
 is possible that its proprietor 
 was asleep in his four-poster, 
 modestly wearing his nightcap. 
 
 On the other hand, it is 
 probable that the rattle of the 
 pole-chains of the mail and 
 the notes of the coach-horn 
 may have awakened him from 
 his first beauty sleep. 
 
 If this were so, it was more 
 than likely—as a natural train 
 of thought for the keen business 
 mind—that the idea on that 
 
THE BATH ROAD 
 
 Ae) RYE At efonlats at ate 
 
 Ct ed Siauee= pe LI 
 
 LATIN NAMA 
 
 i 
 
 ADNNINPGANN 
 
 aa’ 
 
 Nt 
 
 ANNINMULIN 
 
 ONY 
 \ : 
 = 
 } 
 ) 
 
 ANY; 
 
 AN 
 | 
 
 AAT 
 | 
 
 = ——— 
 
 q 
 \ 
 U 
 ) 
 
 \\ 
 
 st ; 
 
 | ‘ | 
 A 
 
 “THE NOTES OF THE COACH-HORN MAY HAVE AWAKENED Him.” 
 
 night occurred to him, for the first time, of selling his ginger nuts 
 the travellers on the Bath coaches the next day, while the horses were 
 being changed at the Bear Inn opposite. 
 
 57 
 
 to 
 
 In this way my little Bath mail-coach puppet may have been 
 
 responsible for the origin of the present great industry of Reading; 
 for certain it is that it was about that time that this idea suggested 
 itself to the proprietor, and that ever afterwards the fame of the ginger 
 nuts made at his little shop spread far and wide among coach 
 travellers. 
 
 The subsequent popularity these biscuits acquired, and the money 
 
 H 
 
 made through selling them, were the foundation stones of this vast 
 business and the stepping-stones to the statue of one of its founders 
 (top-hat, frock-coat, and umbrella complete) which to-day greets us 
 we enter the Broad Street of Reading Town; my only regret is that 
 
 as 
 
58 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 the original of this work of art should have had so little faith in 
 the climatic conditions of his native town that he would not allow 
 
 his better half to hold his umbrella for him whilst he posed for the 
 
 Rael 
 
 —<— 
 pT a INT Ts a 
 —s 
 
 5 
 — —S> 
 
 —=—_— = a — ) —— 
 Z | 
 R47 
 
 a Ee ‘unt dey € Geo Gi eoes, —— 
 
 INF ECTIONWERS 
 
 ci il j 
 
 Le 
 iy 
 
 “To SELL HIS GINGER NUTS TO THE TRAVELLERS ON THE BATH COACHES.” 
 
 Once through Reading, the Bath Road as far as Newbury was fairly 
 level, with only slight galloping undulations, and this part of the road 
 was always kept fairly free from dust by water drawn from the numerous 
 pumps placed at regular intervals along the highway. 
 
 These pumps are still standing and line the road as silent sentinels 
 of the coaching era. 
 
 Just outside Reading, on the right-hand side of the road, lies Calcot _ 
 
THE BATH ROAD 59 
 
 Park, occupied in 1828 by a Mrs. Boville; but in the early part of the 
 eighteenth century one of its former owners, Miss Frances Kendrick, 
 had given to the world another romance of the Bath Road, the 
 relating of which enlivened the monotony of the night drive towards 
 Newbury. 
 
 The lady in question was young, beautiful, and an heiress, but the 
 burly young squires of Berkshire had none of them been able to awaken 
 thoughts of Cupid or Hymen in her apparently cold bosom. 
 
 Into Reading one day came Benjamin Child, a young, single, 
 impecunious lawyer, and, as T%e Ballad of the Berkshire Lady tells 
 us, our heroine fell desperately in love with him. 
 
 The rest of the story, however, sounds much more modern, and 
 
 more in keeping with the sort of way our 1928 Miss would handle 
 the matter—for Frances sent Benjamin a challenge to fight a duel with 
 an unknown, not disclosing her identity, and upon the young lawyer 
 arriving at the rendezvous, Calcot Park, he found to his astonishment 
 a masked woman was to be his adversary. 
 _ Here was a dilemma for any young and, I can only think, un- 
 impressionable youth—for the story tells us that he had already 
 met Miss Kendrick at some sort of a function, féte, or festivity a day 
 or so before, and that he had not then fallen to her charms, as Frances 
 now fully intended he should do. 
 
 Peo now take your choice,” says she; “either fight or 
 marry me.” 
 
 A little abrupt, but is what the ballad tells us. 
 
 Benjamin, being a lawyer, and no doubt realizing that fighting was 
 against the law, decided very wisely to take the latter course, and the 
 lady then unmasking, he immediately hastened with her, or she with 
 him, I don’t know which, to Calcot Church, where the knot was 
 duly tied. 
 
 Stout fellow! I agree with Frances that these long engagements 
 are a mistake. 
 
 This, however, is only the way I have translated our box seat 
 passenger’s story; but anyone who is more interested and wishes for 
 further details can find it all in The Ballad of the Berkshire Lady, 
 which was published in Queen Anne’s reign about the time of the 
 episode. 
 
60 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 at 
 46MILE 
 STONE 
 
 2 gaat 
 ah 
 
 oC: -* aig 
 ge? & a oh 
 
 At the Falcon Inn at Theale 
 (or Theal, as we spelt it a 
 hundred years ago) the fifth 
 team for the Bath mail got to 
 work, which took the coach 
 on through Woolhampton to 
 Thatcham, where, at “Tie 
 King’s Head,” the next change 
 was made. 
 
 And here also it was that 
 ‘“* Broadback ”’ left the coach, 
 having driven it 53 miles, and 
 where a fresh coachman was 
 waiting to drive the mail on to 
 Bath. As soonas ‘ Broadback’’ 
 got down from the box he 
 opened the door to inform the 
 insides of this fact, in case they 
 might wish to ‘ remember” 
 him. “Gentlemen, I leave you 
 here”?; which meant the same 
 thing that the wine steward 
 means at a public dinner, when 
 he breathes into your ear as 
 you sip your port that he is 
 now leaving. 
 
 Coachmen and guards were 
 not paid very high wages, the 
 Post Office only paying their 
 guards 10s. a week; but on a 
 popular coach the tips both 
 received amounted to a con- 
 siderable amount per annum. 
 A Post Office guard would 
 travel with his mail from seventy 
 to eighty miles, and then a fresh 
 guard would take his place; and 
 
¥ 
 
 s ie 
 * ‘ cies $i 
 rad " rs i 
 7 3 ¢ ee | oes 
 3 ’ ae) Vv; “ 4 AX, zs & 
 y J ‘ i a 5. 
 be a 7 
 <7 . : . 
 . s ‘ My 
 ~ a rf a eee gary 
 ~ ti 
 _ i "ie 
 n ne ‘ 9; 
 vy 2 , 
 Ane 
 i eh 4 
 J ¥ 
 z . ’ he 
 r 
 é 
 £5, < N 
 a Ds 
 z ‘i we ~ x 
 ae jaa Se 
 - ai 
 a e3 yw 
 : ty Sale 
 ae P" R 
 . we 
 £ 
 ? * “ ss - F 
 pa ‘ ¥ 
 1 ¥ * i Foy at 
 i, g 
 ir ‘ 
 . ® 
 " 
 3 
 : 
 ae Fe we » 
 iv My 
 - * 
 a! a, tom 1 
 ' ’ . ee 
 im 
 2 
 + 
 4 a 2 
 Na 4? 
 - 
 Gi, 
 at > 
 . ‘ ; % Ay 
 by u 
 * 2 ee oe 
 it 4 " 
 & ae ~ 
 . . 
 - fi a « 
 
a a 
 
1 CS on eee 
 
 | 
 y 7 
 : 
 : 
 4 
 
 ee a 
 
 THE BATH ROAD 61 
 
 with coachmen the same thing applied. The Edinburgh mail had 
 twelve guards on the road. 
 
 Like their teams, they would go back the next night on the up mail, 
 and “ Broadback”’ returned to London on the following day on the 
 mail which arrived at Thatcham at 12.30 a.m., he and his brother 
 driving this stage on alternate nights. 
 
 The only drawback to this system was that these coachmen 
 and guards had to keep up two homes; but, like sailors, who, 
 
 THE GEORGE AND PELICAN INN, NEWBURY. 
 
 I understand from nautical men, have a wife in every port, they may 
 perhaps not have objected to this. I am afraid that some of my 
 male friends who live at Maidenhead would queue up for the job to-day 
 if a vacancy occurred. Like sailors, I don’t suppose either guards or 
 coachmen had such a very bad time, however much they may have 
 grumbled to the Post Office and proprietors about the extra expense 
 entailed. 
 
 Leaving the main street of Newbury on our left, the coach passed 
 the celebrated George and Pelican Inn, a house where most of the 
 
62 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 day coaches stopped and well 
 
 known to every traveller on the 
 Bath Road of that period. 
 
 «The Pelican” at Speenhamland 
 It stands upon a hill. 
 
 You know it is “The Pelican” 
 By its enormous bill, 
 
 quoted ‘‘ Narrowback ” as we 
 passed by it, which may or may 
 not have been a libel upon 
 the landlady, the road-famous 
 Mrs. Botham. A few miles 
 from here the mail was 
 driven past the old castellated 
 toll-gates on the main road, 
 which were erected in this 
 form to mark the half-way spot 
 between London and Bristol; 
 at the time of our story Bristol 
 
 | eee was a very important seaport, 
 es BIER bas ee and the Bristol Road had also 
 : j Bat 20o. the distinction of being the first 
 southern road to be made under 
 the able hands of Mr. Mac- 
 adam. And then the road takes 
 the travellers by the side of the 
 Kennet, gleaming in the moon- 
 light, to Hungerford Town and 
 its Bear Inn. 
 
 This is a town of fisher-folk 
 and tutti-men, a town of the rod 
 and reel, where the nimble and 
 elusive trout, disporting in the 
 River Kennet, is tickled to death 
 by disciples of Izaak Walton, and 
 where tutti-men at Hock-tide 
 kiss the girls who cannot pay. 
 
 29% oN 
 2 gf 
 
 2 os es eon a 
 Rg ore 
 
THE BATH ROAD 63 
 
 “ DD "es qT 
 
 i 
 
 ct => A Ap 
 
 ae SHE Ngee 
 
 irk; yh BE ar 
 He) 2 “2 7 ee f 
 
 oe. ay ee Ze 
 . u ay \ vt hf icciiin "U . A i (" W/ t { Ze A : ( ff 
 LS ol } Ri) My ha Y / yy) i 
 
 Si “ie : 
 \ 
 
 lid 
 
 THE HALFWAY HOUSE BETWEEN LONDON AND BRISTOL. 
 
a ae ers 
 oP eT 
 
 Bi 
 
 64 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 Unfortunately, I have no 
 fishing story, neither have I 
 personal experience of the 
 tutti-man’s art; and so we 
 
 pass by Hungerford, “ cele- 
 brated for its troutes,’’ and 2 
 the mail wheels roll on to the a 
 Duchess of Somerset’s alms- a 
 houses at Froxfield, where = 
 twenty-four clergymen’s : 
 widows could live free. a 
 
 As the morning sun rose 
 behind the guard, “‘ Narrow- 
 back’? told the story of 
 
 Littlecote Park, about a mile a 
 
 away, where once lived the e 
 
 notorious Wild Darrel or ae 
 
 Dayrel. Be 
 
 The story goes that Day- a 
 
 rel, having “‘ gott his lady’s = 
 
 waiting-woman into trouble, : 
 
 sent a servant for a midwife ia 
 
 é who was to be brought to 4 
 . eee the house hoodwinked at the a 
 9 3 2 2° 28 necessary time.”’ ey 
 =< Mes ae se " EP The "child was born, but 4 
 PERCE cc — oe re : the “‘ hoodwinked”? midwife BS 
 somehow or other raised her 4 
 
 ‘““hoodwink’’ and saw the y 
 
 cruel father “‘ murther’’ the BS 
 
 child and burn it in the = 
 
 fire!!! a 
 
 The knowledge of ‘this suum 
 horrible deed so preyed upon ; a 
 her mind that she did her ie 
 utmost to discover the house 
 
 = ations 32. 
 one ‘ to which she had been taken 
 
 72. MILE 
 
 TONE 
 
THE BATH ROAD 65 
 
 when “ hoodwinked.” She conjectured it must have been some great 
 house, as she had seen that the room in which the tragedy occurred was 
 a very lofty one. Then, like a wise person, she went to a Justice of 
 the Peace, a search was made, the chamber was found, and the “‘ knight 
 was brought to his tryall,” all in correct story-book sequence. The 
 result of the “‘ tryall ” was that Dayrel, for some unaccountable reason, 
 was let off by a judge whose name was 
 
 POPHAM. 
 All of which took place in Queen Elizabeth’s reign. 
 
 On consulting Patterson as the coach passed by in 1828, it was 
 seen that 
 COLONEL POPHAM’S 
 
 address was Littlecote Park!!! Which, as ‘‘ Broadback ’? commented, 
 sounded appropriate to the purlieus of Hungerford—fishy. 
 
 And then in the early morning the glorious drive through Savernake 
 or Marlborough Forest. The sun behind us threw long shadows from 
 the coach and its team; but, unlike those cast by the setting sun when 
 the mail set out, now acted as an advance guard instead of a rear guard. 
 
 A vixen with one of Farmer Giles’s chickens in her jaws loped across 
 the highway, making for the earth where her fast-growing family were 
 awaiting their breakfast; a brace of magpies chattered at her as she 
 rose on the opposite slope; a jay screeched spitefully as she passed 
 under the tree where he was resting. 
 
 Rabbits stopped their breakfasts and scuttled back to their burrows, 
 and a group of fallow deer stampeded at the sound of the approaching 
 mail, which, leaving the forest behind, journeyed on to the entrance 
 to the broad street of Marlborough, and pulled up at the Angel Inn 
 for a fresh team of horses at 5.30 o’clock in the forenoon—according 
 to the guard’s time-sheet. 
 
 Here our coachman would allow a few minutes’ wait, and then away 
 once more up the High Street with its overhanging gables and 
 delightful skyline, to the entrance to the Castle Inn. 
 
 This inn, as we know, is now part of Marlborough College, but it 
 was in previous years the home of the Earl of Hertford. 
 
 ‘Like many old houses, it had had its vicissitudes. It was built 
 I 
 
66 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 towards the end of the seventeenth 
 century on the site of the then ruined 
 Marlborough Castle, and Inigo Jones 
 was responsible for its design but did 
 not actually build it. 
 
 When erected for the Hertfords 
 it was described as a “‘great rambling 
 building,” and had the fish-ponds, 
 bowling green, clipped hedges and 
 other “‘ pleasaunces’’ which were 
 the necessary adjuncts to a great 
 family mansion of those days. 
 
 Lady Hertford, afterwards 
 Duchess of Somerset, whose collec- 
 tion of clergymen’s widows we have 
 already passed at Froxfield, dearly 
 loved her garden with its lawns 
 surrounded by beehive-shaped yew 
 trees, and here for some years after 
 her husband’s death she entertained 
 the countryside and numerous literary 
 and artistic notabilities. 
 
 On the death of her son the 
 house passed, through her daughter, 
 to the Duke of Northumberland, who, 
 in the year 1757, allowed it to be 
 turned into an inn, much to the dis- 
 gust of the lady whose loving care had 
 made its gardens so celebrated. 
 
 Apparently Mr. George Smith, of 
 the Artillery Ground, London, wasthe 
 first inn landlord, and it was also re- 
 corded that he was allowed to purchase 
 some of the family portraits with the 
 OF ED house, to the great horror of the 
 Oe: friends of the Duchess, who recognized 
 them later when they visited the inn. 
 
 ' 
 ‘ - 2 as 
 . 
 
 “. 
 oe 
 . 
 . 
 = 
 ey 
 . 
 - 
 = 
 : 
 s 
 . 
 
 , 
 
 » 
 - 
 
 - 
 
  y- « 
 ? 
 
 * 
 of 
 ’ 
 
 CJ 
 
THE BATH ROAD 67 
 
 The Castle Inn, as it was called, soon became a great hostelry on 
 the Bath Road, perhaps the largest and most fashionable inn in 
 England, and drew a very lucrative business for its proprietor for 
 many years. 
 
 At the time our mail and her passengers passed it the landlord was 
 Joseph White, and the house was then at the zenith of its fame as a 
 coaching inn. 
 
 All through the daytime its approach was blocked with stage- 
 coaches (forty coaches changed here daily), travelling carriages and 
 post-chaises, for it was a favourite house for wealthy private individuals 
 when travelling. 
 
 The Earl of Chatham, who always travelled em prince, was once 
 kept a fortnight at this house owing to an attack of gout, and while 
 there insisted on having the whole staff of the hostelry put into the 
 Chatham livery in addition to his own servants. 
 
 During the winter months travellers to Bath were often forced 
 to make a lengthened stay at Marlborough until the weather was 
 suitable for crossing the much-dreaded Wiltshire Downs to Devizes, 
 and when the comforts of the Castle Inn were available, they might 
 have been loth to encounter snow, east winds or hail on the next two 
 stages, much in the same way that a liable-to-be-seasick voyager 
 hesitates to start across the Channel in rough weather. 
 
 The Castle Inn no doubt helped to give a considerable amount of 
 prosperity to the town, until steam stepped in and heartlessly robbed 
 it of all its glories. 
 
 The first change after leaving Marlborough was made at Beckhamp- 
 ton Inn. Along this part of the road at this early hour of the morning 
 the ploughman might have been seen starting out with his team, the 
 ‘“fogger,” and dairymaid going to the cattle sheds to milk the cows, for 
 at that time there were no eight-hour days and the agricultural labourer 
 made an early start. 
 
 Although, so far, no mention has been made of the guard, this 
 important personality of the mail has since the coach left London had 
 a great deal to do. 
 
 On the way his horn had to be constantly used, to get sleeping carters 
 to move their teams from the crown of the road to allow the coach to 
 pass, and also to warn the various Post Ofhices and sub-post stations to 
 
68 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 be in readiness to receive their 
 
 eae | pee eas mail-bags without causing the 
 vi tA cae driver to lose valuable time. 
 Then also he would enliven the 
 
 e 5) (B86 MILE ; i 
 Sas ene monotony of the drive through 
 one ee the night by playing selections on 
 Pa sek, his key bugle. The ‘yard o’ 
 nt mag re tin’? was supplied to him by the 
 
 Post Ofhce, but his key bugle 
 was his own private enterprise. 
 
 His favourite tunes were 
 “Sally in our Alley,” =i 
 Post Horn Galop,” etc. 
 
 Many of the  stage-coach 
 guards had fine voices, and a 
 good song, well sung, no doubt 
 increased the tip which was 
 received when the passengers left 
 
 out ge. of P8 Tone the coach; moreover, a coach with 
 
 oe alge, ; 
 
 hae a genial coachman and a cheery 
 
 we oe guard generally carried a fu// house. 
 te. - 299 
 
 ~—_ 
 -~ 
 
 L 
 
 ee As the guard sat alone on 
 et ene 6 
 
 the back seat of the mail, the 
 distance between the passengers 
 and the vocalist might perhaps 
 have given his efforts rather the 
 effect of a screened and distant 
 orchestra, and not necessarily 
 have interfered with the flow of 
 conversation. 
 
 Be that as it may, a guard’s 
 concert may not always have been 
 welcome to inside passengers 
 ss ; trying to sleep, although to those 
 oa ay outside, where sleeping had its 
 
 dangers, his music may have been 
 more welcome. 
 
 vie 
 F502. \ sumer ham Eritge foe! 
 
 ~, Ai Et 
 var Ta 
 
 OUMILE 
 fF STONE 
 
 oe ae wha 
 — 27°C igSgrone a 
 
THE BATH ROAD 69 
 
 I think it was De Quincey who found this singing by the guard 
 rather an overrated pastime—but he may have been unlucky in his 
 performer, or have been suffering from indigestion. 
 
 A 
 
 —<——— 
 
 v 
 
 : 
 
 — 
 
 105) 
 
 iy 
 
 H 
 (one 
 Dy Wh 
 : . LDS 
 YF 
 ZS 
 Be 
 yy, F 
 
 A VILLAGE Post OFFICE. 
 
 On arrival at the change the guard helped with it, if he had no mails 
 to attend to and deliver—so that less than every hour he had to get down 
 from his perch and do some work which would stretch his stiffened 
 limbs. 
 
 Besides this he had mail-bags to leave at many points on the 
 road which were not changing places. Sometimes, to a waiting Post 
 
70 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 Office messenger; at other times 
 they were passed through the 
 bedroom window of the village 
 postmaster, whose night-capped 
 head would appear at the open 
 
 eS lattice, while the coach wheels 
 S hardly stopped revolving. 
 ce A long pole, or shepherd’s 
 LEE oe es a crook, with its hook on the end 
 ont Den 2 Pe oat was occasionally used for this pur- 
 mre eS ste foe pose, the guard taking off the down 
 Be tee 19.2 goa or up mails, as the case might be, 
 Vee out trie ee ee . : : 
 ain ny egg aie and replacing this with the bag 
 Li youd : ee for the village and surrounding 
 “Pape gs \ Pe 1}. _ district. come 
 ake ane Sears < A mail guard’s first duty was 
 ae ee Fuses to deliver his mails whatever the 
 es a8 Rese 0 weather conditions. Snow, hail or 
 le Evend : fog, he had to get them to their 
 ropa fo Wee oe destination. 
 A. wei ars i. : a In the hard snowstorms of 
 (Se “ December ’36, many guards had 
 ae ps ar y+ terribly trying experiences. 
 oe ia poe. Mail-coaches were buried in 
 
 snowdrifts all over England, 
 coaches had to be abandoned and 
 guards had to ride on alone with 
 the mail-bags tied on their horse’s 
 backs, while the unfortunate passen- 
 gers were left to get themselves 
 out of the snowdrifts as best they 
 could; about which we will tell 
 later when we join the Portsmouth 
 Road for a winter day’s travel, 
 only here stating that our Thatcham | 
 coachman remembered the great 
 : snowstorm of 1808, when Neville, 
 
 i“ ings down 
 ye aia Sell 
 sta 
 
 NE 
 
 Fg 
 ERS 
 -——LEIO a. tos mice 
 
 — Tae STONE 
 hs 
 
THE BATH ROAD 71 
 
 the guard at that time, was found frozen to death on arrival at 
 Devizes; and just as the driver finished the story the mail drove u 
 to the Black Bear Inn at that town at 6.50 o’clock in the forenoon 
 on this summer’s morning. 
 
 SI Sy _ 
 moe Sy 
 TT LL TT ATT] 
 ’ he t { 
 
 Lule 
 
 4 que 
 
 “PASSED THROUGH THE BEDROOM WINDOW OF THE VILLAGE POSTMASTER.” 
 
 Devizes in the early part of the nineteenth century was celebrated 
 for its cloth factories, and was a very important and populous town. 
 
 The two most important of its inns were “The Bear”? and “ The 
 Castle,’ at both of which post-boys were always ready to drive the 
 
We. ol 
 
 oe THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 traveller; the former building was a picturesque and rambling old house 
 with large stables at the back. 
 
 At the Bear Inn the mail changed horses, the twelfth team on 
 the road, and the way in which this change was made I should like to 
 describe. ‘To take four horses successfully out of a coach and harness 
 four fresh ones in their places, in the space of one minute and a-half 
 or two minutes, was an operation which had to be done like clockwork 
 with everything in correct order. 
 
 When the change was in sight and the guard had sounded the 
 notes on his horn to warn the ostlers to be in readiness, the coachman 
 asked the passenger beside him to unbuckle the ends of the lead and 
 wheel reins just before the mail came to a standstill. 
 
 “Nimrod,” in the Sporting Magazine of two years before, had 
 commented upon these very rapid changes, then in vogue on the road, 
 and I cannot do better than quote so able an authority: 
 
 ‘There is no part of coaching economy in which a greater altera- 
 tion has been made than in the act of changing horses. 
 
 “It scarcely seems credible that four horses can be taken from a 
 coach, and four others put into their places, in the very short space 
 of sixty seconds; but so it is. 
 
 ‘“ A quarter of an hour, or at least ten minutes, was the usual time 
 allowed for this purpose when I first knew the road; but at the present 
 day, unless some business is to be transacted such as taking fares for 
 passengers, setting down, getting out parcels, etc., I should say the 
 average is three minutes for each change, with fast coaches. 
 
 “There is, however, one practice attending this harlequin-like 
 performance which I must condemn, and which I would not suffer 
 if I were the proprietor of the fastest coach in England. That is— 
 having no buckles at the end of either leaders’ or wheelers’ reins, 
 for should one of them drop out of the coachman’s hands, it would 
 be out of his power to recover it, and an accident must be the 
 consequence.’ 
 
 Another authority, but of a little later period, gives the following 
 as the best method of negotiating the change: 
 
 ‘“ A smart coachman usually took his place in changing horse, and 
 it was quite possible, as I know from experience, having been timed by 
 a box passenger, to effect the change in one minute and a-half, with 
 
ere > 
 
 THE BATH ROAD ; 73 
 
 only one horsekeeper, assisted by coachman and guard; but to do this 
 every one must know his own place; they must not be tumbling over 
 one another. ‘The best drill I ever knew for this purpose was as follows: 
 As the coach gradually stopped, the guard got down and ran forward 
 to unhook the near leader’s outside trace, and then drew the lead rein 
 through the terrets, after which he changed the near horse, and finished 
 by running the near lead rein; the horsekeeper, on the offside, unhooked 
 the remaining lead traces, uncoupled the wheel horses, and changed 
 the offside one. The coachman, getting down as fast as he could, finished 
 changing the leaders. 
 
 “The horses had, of course, previous to the arrival of the coach, 
 been properly placed, the wheel on each side of the road and the leaders 
 coupled.” 
 
 There is very little doubt, however, that there were many ways 
 of performing this operation—one equally as good as the other, although 
 each coachman may have had his own pet theory. 
 
 Over the Kennet and Avon Canal the mail travelled into Melksham, 
 another cloth factory town, where a group of children awaited her at 
 the side of the road. These bare-legged and unshod imps, both girls 
 and boys, made a practice of meeting many of the coaches during the 
 day and, by running by the side of them and turning cartwheels as they 
 went, collected quite a lot of money for their parents from the coppers 
 thrown to them by the passengers. 
 
 Calne, on the other Bath Road, was more notorious for this practice 
 than Melksham, and Pierce Egan, in his Walks Through Bath, 1828, 
 said of them, “ the girls keeping tight hold of petticoats and tumbling 
 over head and heels with the greatest ease and agility, and on quitting 
 the coach they immediately lay themselves down at the side of the 
 road till another coach appeared and so on till end of day.” (Quite a 
 strenuous day for girls, I should imagine.) 
 
 This pastime, which a few years ago, on Derby Day and Ascot week, 
 used to be a common one among gipsy children, in 1828 seems 
 to have been a perquisite of Wiltshire, and more especially of the towns 
 in the vicinity of Bath. 
 
 Then one last change and the coach ran on down Kingsdown Hill, 
 and at 8.15 a.m. the mail rattled through Walcot turnpike and entered 
 the City of Bath. 
 
 K 
 
74. THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 At 8.20 she delivered her mails at the Post Office, and set down 
 her passengers, and so came to the end of her journey. 
 
 In the city the chief coaching inns were the “Lamb,” ‘“ White 
 Lion,” ‘White Hart,” and York Hotel; and the ‘“ White Hart”’ 
 stood where we now see the Royal Pump Room hostelry. The last 
 two on the list had most of the coaching trafhe. 
 
 THE WHITE Hart INN (Now RoyAL Pump Room Hotet), BATH. 
 
 Much of Bath to-day is as it was when my puppets journeyed its 
 road; much the same as when Charles Dickens wrote about it, or when 
 Beau Nash held sway in it—as the arbiter of fashion. Pump Room, 
 terraces, courts and alleys, all breathe out an atmosphere of the 
 eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and as we walk through the 
 old city we can easily see our fellow-passengers of the Bath mail 
 traversing its streets. 
 
THE BATH ROAD one 
 
 ‘‘ Narrowback”’ raises his hat to us; and ‘‘ Gentlemen, we leave 
 you here,” from guard and coachman, reminds us that the journey is 
 finished, and that we have returned to 1928 with its motor traction, 
 railways, aeroplanes, telegraph, telephones, and wireless; and our own 
 journey in the Bath mail, “at the incredibly fast rate of travel” of 
 11 miles an hour, has come to an end. 
 
 Srac 
 
 able 
 ; ham 3] 
 
 q 
 
 P 
 i 
 ; 
 
H.R.H. Duke of Kent, Kensington Palace 
 Lord Holland, Holland House 
 
 A. Copeland, Esq. 
 Major Morrison 
 
 Col. Clitheroe, Boston House 
 
 E. Ellice, Esq., Wyke House 
 Earl of Jersey, Osterley Park 
 Lady Banks, Spring Grove 
 
 Countess of Berkeley, Cranford Park 
 
 Rt. Hon. John Sullivan Richings 
 J. Boswell, Esq., Iver Lodge 
 Lord Gambier, Iver Grove 
 
 Sir R. B. Harvey, Bart., Langley Park 
 J. Jackson, Esq., Langley Lodge 
 Mrs. Buckland, Langley Grove 
 
 J. Penn, Esq., Stoke Park 
 Lord Sefton, Stoke Farm 
 Rey. Evans, Britwell House 
 
 Pascoe Grenfell, Esq., ‘Taplow House 
 Lord Newry, Berry Hill 
 
 T. Lucas, Esq., Taplow Hill 
 
 Mrs. Tunno, Taplow Lodge 
 
 Sir G. Warrinder, Bart., Cliefden 
 Sir S. Young, Formosa Place 
 
 Lord Boston, Hedsor Lodge 
 Lord Grenville, Dropmore 
 
 Mrs. Hall, ‘The Enns 
 
 ‘T. Atkinson, Esq., The Cottage 
 Col. Brotherton Stubbings 
 
 Sir Gilbert East, Bart., Hall Place 
 Gen. Vansittart, Bisham Abbey 
 
 Mrs. Cavendish, Bear Hill 
 Sir Morris Ximenes, Bear Place 
 
 Dr. Phillimore, Shiplake House 
 Lord Mark Ker, Holme Wood 
 R. Palmer, Esq., Holme Park 
 Col. Marsac, Caversham Park 
 
 Kensington 
 
 ‘Turnham Green 
 
 Brentford 
 Smallbury Green 
 
 Cranford Bridge 
 Colnbrook 
 
 Slough 
 
 Salt Hill 
 
 Maidenhead Bridge 
 
 Maidenhead 
 
 Maidenhead ‘Thicket 
 
 Hare Hatch 
 
 Twyford 
 
 Duke of Devonshire, Chiswick House 
 Hon. Col. Cavendish, Sutton Court 
 Mrs. Louth, Grove House 
 
 Duke of Northumberland, Syon House 
 
 R. Hope, Esq. 
 
 Lord J. Hay, Worton House 
 
 E. C, Southbrook, Esq., Worton Lodge 
 H. Cerf, Esq., Worton Hall 
 
 Lord Montague, Ditton Park 
 
 Sir W. Johnson, Bart., Burnham Grove 
 
 T. Wilson, Esq., Ives Place 
 Sir W. Herne 
 
 Mrs. A. M. Trenchard, Hendons House 
 W. Dodwell, Esq., Knibers 
 
 C. Sawyer, Esq., Altwood 
 
 T. Althorpe, Esq., Bullocks Hatch 
 H. Harford, Esq., Down Place 
 
 H. Walter, Esq., Holyport 
 
 C. Fuller, Esq., Philberts 
 
 W. Atkins, Esq., Braywick Grove 
 Mrs. E. Law, Cannon Hill 
 Admiral West, Braywick Lodge 
 A. Vansittart, Shottesbrook Park 
 
 John Kearney, Esq., White Waltham 
 C. Corneford, Esq., Waltham Place 
 Mrs. Lee Perrott, Scarlets 
 
 Lady Sherbourn, Ruscombe House 
 
 Sir John Lloyd Dukenfield, Bart., Stanlake 
 House 
 
 Lady Eyre, Hurst Park 
 
 Mrs. Wowen, Hurst House 
 
“ONE HUNDRED | 
 
 Mrs, Liebenrood, Prospect Park 
 Mrs. Beville, Calcot House 
 Col. Blagrave, Tilehurst Place 
 
 R. P. Benyon de Beauvoir, Esq., Engle- 
 field House 
 
 Rev. C. Stephens, Bradfield Hall 
 
 Earl of F almouth, Woolhampton House 
 W. Poyntz, Esq., Midgham House 
 B. Bunbury, Esq., Marlston House 
 
 Dr. Penrose, Shaw House 
 F. S. Stead, Esq., Donnington Castle House 
 J. Bebb, Esq., Donnington Grove 
 
 Fulwar Craven, Esq., Chilton House 
 G. H. Cherry, Esq., Denford House 
 Gen. Popham, Littlecot Park 
 
 Sir Francis Burdett, Bart., Ramsbury 
 Manor 
 
 T. G, Bucknell Estcourt, Esq., New Park 
 
 Mrs. Heathcote, Shaw Hill House 
 Mrs. Dickenson, Monks House 
 
 R, Fowler, Esq., Chapel House 
 J. Wiltshire, Esq., Shockerwick 
 
 G. Adams, Esq., Bailbrook House 
 
 . Aone 
 
 ) YEARS AGO 
 
 Twyford 
 
 Reading 
 
 Theal 
 
 Jack’s Booth 
 
 Woolhampton 
 
 Newbury 
 
 Hungerford 
 
 Marlborough 
 
 Fyfield 
 Overton 
 Devizes 
 
 Summerham Bridge 
 
 Melksham 
 Shaw 
 
 Atford 
 Kingsdown Hill 
 
 Bathford 
 Bath Easton 
 Bath 
 
 77 
 
 J. Wheble, Esq., Woodley Lodge 
 Lord Sidmouth, Early Court 
 E. Golding, Esq., Maiden Early 
 
 Duke of Wellington, Strathfieldsaye Park 
 B. Monck, Coley Park 
 
 Mrs, ‘Thoyts, Sulhampstead House 
 Sir C. S. Hunter, Bart., Mortimer Hill 
 
 C. Brockhurst, Esq., Oakfield Park 
 
 T. Bacon, Esq., Padworth House 
 
 W. Congreve, Esq., Aldermaston House 
 W. Mount, Esq., Wasing House 
 
 Mrs. Williams, Speen Lawn 
 
 Mrs. Parry, Donnington Priory 
 Margravine of Anspach, Benham Place 
 Earl of Craven, Hampstead Lodge 
 
 J. Willes, Esq., Hungerford Park 
 Mrs. Shaw, Inglewood House 
 
 Marquis of Aylesbury, Savernake Lodge 
 John Goodman, Esq., Oare House 
 Admiral Sir G. Montague, Stowell Lodge 
 
 Mrs. Watkin, Lockeridge House 
 R. Matthews, Esq., Overton House 
 W. Salmon, Esq., South Broom House 
 
 T. Burges, Esq., Seend Lodge 
 Ambrose Audrey, Esq., Seend 
 
 Admiral Sir Harry Neale, Bart., Shaw 
 House 
 
 J. B. Hale, Esq., Cottles House 
 
 D. J. Long, Esq., Monkton Farley 
 H. Skrine, Esq., Warley House 
 
 John Wiltshire, Esq., Bathford House 
 C. Penoyre, Esq., Bath Easton Villa 
 
 W. Thomas, Esq., Prior Park 
 G. Tugwell, Esq., Crow Hall 
 
Se 
 Vea dae 
 
 Once more the clocks of Piccadilly had struck the 
 hour of eight, but on this occasion it was upon 
 a cold morning in December instead of a warm 
 evening in July; a morning certainly not calculated to inspire Londoners 
 with a desire to travel the country on the outside of a stage-coach. 
 Snow had fallen over the town during the night and had rapidly turned 
 to slush in the streets, and the Portsmouth up mail, half an hour late at 
 the Post Office, had reported a heavy fall on many parts of the road. 
 
 On this morning, in the year eighteen hundred and twenty-eight, 
 the ‘‘ Regulator,”’ stage-coach to Portsmouth Town, had left her yard 
 at the “‘ Bolt-in-Tun,’’ Fleet Street, in the gloom of a London fog. 
 Link- boys with torches had accompanied her as far as the ‘Golden Cross” 
 at Charing Cross, as she slowly felt her way to her point of departure 
 from London, Hatchett’s ‘‘ White Horse Cellars’? in Piccadilly. 
 
 Other stage-coaches had already set out for the same seaport 
 and had left their various yards with similar escorts; the earlier and 
 slower conveyances having started from London by the true 
 Portsmouth road, crossing over London Bridge, instead of following 
 the route by which the ‘‘ Regulator ”’—fast coach—left town. 
 
 We, on this journey to Portsmouth—in this Romance of the Road 
 —travelled by the ‘‘ Regulator,”’ only leaving her now for a short 
 time at her Piccadilly stop, while we journey a few miles of the road 
 on one of the slower stages which crossed over London Bridge and 
 plodded its way through the Borough, Newington, Vauxhall, and 
 Wandsworth Village. 
 
 Butchers’ shops and inns, the former all on the west, and the latter 
 on the east side, were the chief features of the Borough High Street 
 at that time, but at neither ‘‘The George’’ nor the ancient Tabard 
 Inn did this slow coach on that morning pick up passengers. 
 
 78 
 
THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD 79 
 
 Past the Marshalsea Prison, the temporary home of debtors and 
 for those indicted for piracy on the high seas, this ‘‘rumble-tumble”’ 
 stage-coach slowly splashed her way, leaving behind her the King’s 
 Bench Prison, whose inmates (if able to pay for it) might procure 
 permission to walk in the snow in St. George’s Fields. 
 
 Through Newington and Vauxhall turnpikes to Battersea Rise, 
 dropping down to Wandsworth and crossing the Wandle River, and so 
 past Howitt’s Farm (the corner here being then known as Howitt’s 
 Corner), up the rise to the Obelisk and then on to Putney Heath. 
 
 Roque’s map, made fifty years before, shows Howitt’s Farm as the 
 only house between Wandsworth Village and the Halfway House 
 adjoining Kingston Gate; no wonder in those days that Putney’s 
 lonely heath was the home of footpads and highwaymen. 
 
 When my stage-coaches travelled to Portsmouth the highwayman 
 was almost extinct, and even the footpad had but a precarious 
 foothold in this neighbourhood. 
 
 Putney Obelisk, at the beginning of the heath, was erected in 1776 
 to David Hartley, who had invented (so every one believed) a method 
 of making upper storeys of houses fireproof when a fire raged below, 
 and George III and Queen Charlotte, we are told, breakfasted without 
 inconvenience in a room in his fire-house at Putney when the building 
 was burning beneath them. 
 
 A sum of over £2,000 was voted by Parliament to the inventor 
 to carry on his experiments, but to-day the Obelisk is apparently the 
 only result of his labours, and, as a work of art, it appears to be hardly 
 worth the money. ne 
 
 From here the stage- 
 coaches from London 
 Bridge travelled the heath 
 road to Robin Hood turn- 
 pike gate, but just before 
 they approached it the 
 apex of a triangle was 
 reached, as at this point 
 the ‘‘ Rocket,” “‘Regu- 
 lator,’ and other fast 
 coaches from Piccadilly 
 
80 
 
 Gown tess = 
 de PTs; We 
 a 
 
 ry ty ee A 
 oon 
 
 Bard if Bristol foozg’ 
 
 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 ‘ 
 »* 
 re, 
 
 62d? 
 
 SE! “ifr ‘ 
 
 a 
 
 would join issue with the slow 
 coaches from London Bridge on 
 the true Portsmouth Road. 
 
 And now we will return to the 
 ‘White Horse Cellars,” where the 
 ‘“Regulator’s’’ coachman has given 
 the ‘‘All right, let em go”’ to the 
 ostlers and the loin cloths have 
 been whisked off the horses’ backs. 
 
 To-day one can scarcely realize 
 the bustle and movement which took 
 place each morning at the two chief 
 Piccadilly coaching houses, between 
 the hours of seven and ten o’clock. 
 
 The mails, aswe know, allstarted 
 at eight o’clock at night. But in 
 the morning stage-coaches for all 
 parts of the West of England as 
 well as for Portsmouth set out 
 from one or other of them. It is 
 not easy to visualize ten, or twenty, 
 four-horse coaches standing, start- 
 ing, or pulling up outside their 
 doors, when the only time most of 
 us have ever seen a four-in-hand is 
 at one of the Horse Shows; yet this 
 scene was a daily occurrence in 
 1828 between the hours mentioned. 
 
 From ten or eleven onwards only 
 the ordinary traffic filled Piccadilly, 
 but in the evening, between six and 
 seven, the dusty and mud-splashed 
 up coaches began to arrive, while at 
 a few minutes to eight the spick- 
 and-span mails drove up to collect 
 mails and passengers for their 
 
 nightly drive. 
 
 a ae Oe a 
 
 Pane pe) | 
 
 a.<9 i 
 
 on i Age 
 a) ao or. so | 
 
 4 
 a 
 
 : 
 o 
 
THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD 81 
 
 The Portsmouth stage-coaches for the first half-mile of their 
 journey, i.e. from Hatchett’s to Knightsbridge Corner, poached upon 
 the Bath Road’s preserves, starting on the same road that the mails 
 Belvevonport, Exeter,” ~ Bath,’ and “‘ Gloucester”’ took in the 
 evening at the same hour. 
 
 We know that portion of the road; we have already been down it 
 when travelling to Bath. 
 
 We know where Tattersall’s yard stood, and that the gates at Hyde 
 Park Corner had only just been erected ; so we may pass along it down the 
 Brompton Road, where our stage-coach leaves it, until we reach the point 
 where South Kensington to-day rears its solid ugliness in front of us. 
 
 A few houses, but mostly market gardens and nurseries, lined this 
 part of the highway which passed down Bell Lane (Brompton Road) 
 to the Queen’s Elm, a tree standing by itself on the roadside. And 
 so the Portsmouth stage-coach travelled on by Chelsea Park and little 
 Chelsea Village almost to Parson’s Green, to Putney’s wooden bridge, 
 to cross over which the coaches paid an eighteenpenny toll. 
 
 But Putney or Fulham Old Bridge (four miles from London) 
 deserves a picture— 
 
 PuTNEY OLD BRIDGE. 
 
82 
 
 Srtsmovth, ; 
 p EAitnay Heath 
 bs ghia y ee 
 
 ae ty roy) wh 
 
 Frag 
 ee 
 
 Sy SS vs ns 
 us ZY : 
 Be } Sige Rebohood fate 
 “t. a ow aA 
 ct eS ~ Oe 
 Y cg "yt t Aighway man 
 ee ge oe 
 (oFe 2) 
 8 e - W8-ren Fhe — 
 fe tie rl'o, of Liverpoo 
 
 ister Tarren fous 
 
 ven tt Garden) 
 "5h eatre 
 
 ' ’ a 
 R : Tile seats 
 I Bstchaise aye, wes 
 
 FDU ca ag mlb site 
 eee 7 7 
 time ry 
 
 ase pe te 
 
 oe, oe 4 
 
 " =, : lly ” wr 
 
 ' 
 
 pet 
 
 Ti Landon 
 
 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 It was constructed by “ Mr. 
 Philips,” carpenter to King George 
 II, and rather looks like it—any- 
 how it was certainly a carpenter’s 
 job and not a bridge-builder’s. 
 
 After this, up the rise to Putney 
 Heath, until two miles farther on 
 the journey, the apex of our 
 triangle was once more reached 
 near the Halfway House at 
 Kingston Vale. 
 
 Putney one hundred years ago 
 was not the populous suburb that 
 it is now, but a fashionable neigh- 
 bourhood; Earl Bathurst, the Earl 
 of Bristol, Viscount Clifden, Lady 
 Grantham and many others of the 
 peerage had country houses there, 
 and near David Hartley’s fire-house 
 was Bowling Green House, which 
 at one time belonged to William 
 Pitt, and in which house he died 
 in 1806. 
 
 Bowling Green House had been 
 built on the site of a mansion of 
 the same name, celebrated as a 
 fashionable resort for public break- 
 fasts and assemblies ; and no doubt, 
 in the latter part of the eighteenth 
 century, the smart thing to do 
 was to drive down to Putney for 
 breakfast. 
 
 The house of Edward Gibbon, 
 the historian, faced Putney Heath 
 just at the point where the stage- 
 coaches climbing Putney Hill 
 reached the common, so that 
 
THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD 83 
 
 Putney had about that time many distinguished people living in its 
 ‘* salubrious purlieus.”’ 
 
 Roque, in his map, marks the Gibbon ancestral home, and Edward 
 Gibbon knew old Putney Bridge well, as Lyson tells us that as far 
 back as he (Gibbon) could remember the house near the bridge, then 
 the residence of his grandfather, Mr. James Porter, was the one where 
 most of his holidays were spent. 
 
 On the morning the “ Regulator” stage-coach travelled across 
 Putney Heath the Gibbon family mansion did not look a very 
 pleasant place to take up one’s residence, and we can quite understand 
 why young Gibbon preferred his grandfather’s home in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Putney’s fascinating wooden bridge and the alluring 
 playground of the banks of the River Thames to the bleak and dreary 
 outlook from the paternal residence. 
 
 As the “ Regulator’”’ travelled this snow-covered common and 
 sunk the dip towards Robin Hood Gate, her few outside passengers 
 pulled mufHers and coats tighter around their shivering bodies, 
 and the white landscape recalled to mind among them many 
 experiences of previous snow-storms; times when mail-coaches 
 had to be abandoned, when guards rode on with the mail- 
 bags, when stage-coaches disappeared in snow-drifts, and when 
 travellers were held prisoners at wayside inns and farmhouses until 
 the snow-covered turnpike roads again became passable for horse 
 traffic. 
 
 Most of these reminiscences were of the great frost of 1814—the 
 year when an ox was roasted whole on the frozen Thames—but it was 
 in 1836 that coach travellers, guards and coachmen had to experience 
 one of the worst series of snow-storms on record. Then, for more 
 than a week, every turnpike road in England was buried feet deep in 
 snow, and the great Duke of Wellington, when travelling to attend a 
 wedding at Badminton, had to have his chaise-and-four dug out on the 
 Marlborough Downs. So many are the records and incidents of the 
 snow-storm of that Christmastide that it will be interesting for us 
 to recall some of them. 
 
 In contemporary news-sheets we read that a few days before the 
 Christmas of ’36 many coaches left London drawn by eight horses ; 
 but the heavy snow-storm started in earnest on Christmas night, a 
 
84. THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 Saturday, and the up mails all arrived late at St. Martin’s-le-Grand on 
 Sunday morning in consequence. 
 
 On arrival at the Post Office on this Sunday, “ Glasgow’s”’ guard 
 reported the northern roads very deeply covered in snow, and that on 
 some parts of the mail route it had taken two hours to do four miles. 
 
 ‘“‘ Exeter”? was nearly three hours late with the news that snow 
 around Dorchester had drifted to five feet in depth, and ‘‘Devonport”’ 
 (the ‘‘Quicksilver’’) did not get to St. Martin’s-le-Grand until 11.30 
 a.m.—her time of arrival being 6.48 at normal times—having taken 
 thirty hours to do the 217 miles which she was scheduled to do in 
 twenty-four hours and forty-five minutes!!! 
 
 ae 
 ea rare a ee, 
 es a0 PE gor ag 
 ee ee = 
 SEZ gaa 
 es EEEwZZEZ g 
 
 EE 
 BeeEZZZ= 
 
 xO. 
 
 ““GoING ON WITH THE MAILS.” 
 
 All of which does not sound very terrible to us to-day, but which at 
 that time, when mails were never one minute late and when we set 
 our watches by them in the country, would mean very serious accidents 
 or, as in this case, a fall of snow of exceptional severity. 
 
THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD 85 
 
 The guard of the ‘“ Quicksilver,” who had come from Ilminster 
 (140 miles), said that the bad storm commenced at Wincanton and 
 continued until London was reached; that between Andover and Whit- 
 church the north wind blowing snow and sleet in their faces almost 
 blinded them; that the mail stuck fast in a snow-drift; that the horses 
 were buried; and that the coachman on getting down also disappeared. 
 Luckily a wagon and four horses came up, and with the help of these 
 they were able to restart the coach. However, all trace of the mail 
 route was by this time obliterated, and the coachman had to continue 
 his journey by guess-work and by trusting to the instinct of his horses. 
 
 On the Monday, “‘ Portsmouth ’’ seemed to have had less trouble 
 than most of the mails, at any rate on the earlier stages of her journey ; 
 and this was partly due to much of the route lying high and the wind 
 blowing the snow as it fell off the crown of the road. After passing 
 Guildford, snow-drifts began seriously to impede their travelling, 
 making their arrival at the Post Office two hours late. 
 
 ‘* Holyhead ”’ and “ Chester ”’ both got into trouble near Dunstable, 
 the former falling into a snow-drift and only being extricated after 
 great difficulty, and the latter having to be entirely abandoned and 
 her mails transferred to the “‘ Holyhead ”’ coach, using the eight horses 
 to continue her journey. 
 
 On Tuesday, in consequence of the non-arrival of so many mails, 
 the Post Office authorities began to have serious trouble in order to 
 find guards for the outgoing coaches. All supernumerary guards were 
 called up, and even strangers were sworn in to travel on the guard’s 
 perch in charge of the mail bags. Regular guards who came in that 
 afternoon on the up mails were forced to go out again at eight o’clock. 
 
 Both the Bath and Bristol mails had to be abandoned eighty miles 
 from London on this Tuesday, the mail bags being sent on across 
 country in a chaise and four with the two guards, who arrived in London 
 on Wednesday morning at 6 a.m. 
 
 Numbers of mails and stage-coaches were left to their fate in the 
 snow between Slough and Maidenhead, which seems to have been one 
 of the worst parts of the Bath Road. 
 
 Another Bristol coach, which should have arrived in London on 
 Monday the 26th at 7.30 p.m., did not get to town until Tuesday at 
 midday, and our friend the Portsmouth “‘ Regulator” was buried on 
 
86 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 —E- 
 IIE 
 Zoe 
 
 Ft x 
 # 
 
 a 
 
 (( WZ WW 
 
 wi 
 
 ay 
 ny 
 
 a erat 
 ae i 
 
 S =| s by 
 
 d, 
 
 = Lj cg ; : naff tee 
 (aa a SS Uff Wy: Za 
 
 WAN > =~ 
 Pm , Vs 
 
 “THE ROAD WAS STREWN WITH ABANDONED Mats, COACHES, 
 AND PostT-CHAISES.” 
 
THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD 87 
 
 Horndean Hill for nearly four hours, and only an army of farm men 
 and horses after much time and labour were able to pull her out. 
 
 Some of these custodians of His Majesty’s mails performed prodigies 
 of endurance during that week, showing true British bulldog tenacity 
 in carrying out their duties, and upholding the traditions of the Post 
 Office service; but a mail-guard’s own description of what he went 
 through at that time is the best evidence of this, and for that reason 
 we will hear what Nobbs, the guard of the Exeter Old Mail, had to say 
 about his journey as related by F. E. Baines, Inspector-General of 
 Mails, in his book Forty Years at the Post Office. 
 
 ‘* After leaving Bristol at seven o’clock,’’ Nobbs stated, ‘‘ all went 
 well until we were nearing Salisbury—that i is to say, ANGIE midnight. 
 Snow had been falling for some time before, but after leaving Salisbury 
 it came down.so thick, and lay so deep, that we were brought to a 
 standstill, and found it Sages to proceed any further. Consequently 
 we had to leave the coach and proceed on horseback to the next changing- 
 place, where I took a fresh horse and started for Southampton. There 
 I procured a chaise and pair and continued my journey to Portsmouth, 
 arriving there at 6 p.m. the next day. I was then ordered to go back 
 to Bristol. On reaching Southampton on my return journey the snow 
 had got much deeper, and at Salisbury I found that the London mails 
 had not arrived. I could not proceed any further. Not to be ‘done’ 
 [there is an example for our present-day chauffeurs—AUTHOR | I took a 
 horse out of the stable, slung the mail bags over his back and pushed 
 on for Bristol, where I arrived next day after much wandering through 
 fields, up and down lanes, across country all one dreary expanse 
 of snow. 
 
 By this time I was about ready for a rest; but there was no rest 
 for me in Bristol, for I was ordered by the Mail Inspector to take the 
 mails on to Birmingham, as there was no other guard available. 
 
 At last I arrived at Birmingham, having been on duty for two days 
 and nights continuously without taking off my clothes.” 
 
 When one remembers that all of this took place during one of the 
 worst snow-storms of the century, and that the distance from Bristol 
 to Portsmouth and back is 198 miles and from Bristol to Birmingham 
 eighty-eight miles, making a total of 286 miles in deep snow, Nobbs’s 
 achievement is marvellous. 
 
“ot- a> WP a oe 
 ne: a ney as: 
 
 : im i 
 
 ie ae 
 
 88 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 To continue the diary of this snow-storm of 1836, on Wednesday, 
 the 28th, the roads became impassable for wheeled traffic, and the 
 country was strewn with abandoned mails, stage-coaches, and post- 
 chaises. 
 
 Near St. Albans the Liverpool mail, when deep in a snow-drift, 
 found two ladies in an abandoned post-chaise, the post-boys having 
 gone on to St. Albans to try to procure fresh horses. 
 
 The up mails outside St. Albans were completely blocked by drifts, 
 300 soldiers being called out (sappers and miners) to dig them 
 out and make a passage for them into the town, when the letters were 
 sent on with the guards only by post-chaise to London. 
 
 On Thursday, the 29th, more and more snow fell, things on the 
 highways became even worse, and the Dover mail was only able to 
 get as far as Rochester. No communication either by. horse or foot 
 beyond this town had been possible for some days, and at Chatham 
 snow was reported from thirty to forty feet deep. The Surveyor of 
 Roads applied to the military authorities of that town for help, and 
 600 soldiers were called out to clear a way through. 
 
 Seventeen coaches on the northern route were stuck fast in the 
 snow at Dunstable, near Coventry, and similar experiences to the drivers 
 of every kind of conveyance happened all over the country. 
 
 On Monday, the 26th, a correspondent from Brighton gave the 
 following report: “‘ All this part of the country is at the present moment 
 buried in snow. A stable-man was picked up in Black Lion Street 
 frozen to death. The ‘Times’ coach, which leaves London at four 
 o’clock and generally arrives here a little after nine, did not get in on 
 Monday night until twenty minutes past eleven, being for the last 
 fifteen miles of the journey clogged up with snow. The Gloucester 
 mail, which ought to have been in by five o’clock, was obliged to stop 
 on the road, and the guard and coachman reached this town only at 
 one o’clock in the morning, having brought the bags in a cart along the 
 beach; they were, however, so affected by the cold that the guard now 
 lies, it is feared, in a dying state. 
 
 The mail started as usual for London on Monday night, but had 
 not got three miles before it was obliged to return. 
 
 A King’s Messenger, who had important dispatches with him, 
 attempted, with the assistance of a guide, to travel on horseback, but 
 
THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD 89 
 
 could not get on and,” the account adds, “‘ the Messenger is about 
 to start again in a post-chaise, and the mail bags will go with him, but 
 no passengers. 
 
 Not a coach besides has left this town or come into it.” 
 
 And so on and so forth, the same thing happening in every part of 
 England. 
 
 I have given rather a large amount of space to this 1836 snow-storm 
 week because I want you to realize what travelling on the “‘ Regulator” 
 to Portsmouth in wintry weather was like in the year 1828, when 
 guards might be frozen to death in their seats, and even passengers 
 killed by the cold. 
 
 But when we temporarily abandoned her to make this detour of 
 the mail-historic-Christmastide of 1836 she was crossing Putney 
 Heath. 
 
 Robin Hood Inn was in sight when this stage-coach joined the 
 Portsmouth Road, and here it was that her first change of horses stood 
 waiting, and her first toll-gate straddled the road ahead. 
 
 = e 
 WO 
 wy 
 
 = 
 S\N 
 i 
 
 ‘infos ; LE a7 
 ; YA 
 M) 
 
 f 
 HX i, Tie. 
 
 “THE CHANGE.” 
 
go THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 Te Sortsmovth 
 
 Slay for be 
 4 gelload and SBuith 
 
 ane 
 
 ae? Bits 
 Batt eh ae f 
 
 Se ae rR 
 'D Earl o pi Onslow 
 
 ‘ 
 fz, 
 1: 
 \ 
 
 Although stage-coaches kept 
 to their scheduled time-tables as 
 far as possible, it was by the mails 
 that the inhabitants of England 
 set their watches, and in changing 
 horses the speed of the change as” 
 accomplished on the night mails 
 was not attempted or expected 
 on the ordinary stage-coaches. — 
 
 Travellers on these liked to have 
 a few moments in which to get 
 refreshment, or to get down and 
 stretch their limbs, and did not wish 
 to be hustled away again almost 
 before the coach had come to a 
 standstill. 
 
 The ‘‘ Regulator’ was a fast 
 
 coach, but not like Sir Vincent — ee 
 
 Cotton’s “Brighton Age,” or, 
 rather, the coach which Sir Vincent 
 drove as amateur coachman. 
 
 In my first little map of the 
 Portsmouth Road you can see him 
 journeying to town in his four- 
 horse travelling chariot for this 
 purpose. The “Age” changed 
 
 horses at the same rapid pace as — a 
 
 the rest of the journey was accom- — 
 
 plished, and so also did a few 
 
 of the very fastest stage-coaches ; Er 
 
 but it was the exception rather a8 
 than the rule, and time-tables 
 (including stoppages) generally — 
 
 allowed five or six minutes for the 
 
 change. eS. 
 After passing through Robin | 
 Hood Gate the coach passed 
 
a < 7 
 
 ‘FIVE MINUTES FOR REFRESHMENTS 
 
a; 
 
 eros 
 
 . 
 
 4 
 
 Ge: 
 
 Pg 
 iso ote f 
 
 iva 
 
 * 
 
THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD gl 
 
 Warren House, and the Earl of Liverpool’s property was on the 
 Coombe Farm side. In Richmond Park could be seen Great Lodge 
 where Lieut.-Gen. Sir Henry Campbell lived, and also New Lodge, 
 the house of Lord Sidmouth. 
 
 From here the “Regulator” travelled through Kingston 
 Market Square and then followed the Thames past Mr. Farren’s 
 house (‘‘of Covent Garden Theatre,’’ according to Patterson—no 
 doubt a little bit of gratuitous publicity), over Ditton Marsh to the 
 Bear Inn at Esher, where her second fresh team stood ready by 
 the side of the road. ‘The Bear,’’ or ‘“‘ The Brown Bear,” as it was 
 originally called, was a changing-place for many of the coaches. After 
 this, Claremont Gates were left behind on the near side of the road, 
 in which house lived at that time H.R.H. the Prince of Saxe-Coburg. 
 
 On Ditton Marsh, where the road was not hedged, the heavy 
 fall of snow had made it none too easy for the ‘‘ Regulator’s”’ 
 coachman to proceed—the milestones and previous wheel-tracks 
 being the only marks for his guidance. 
 
 \ : { 
 iil 
 iy 
 s 
 SS 
 
 so A = 
 Ize TU Gat - 
 ; i Wire — 
 L¢, 5 A q cope r 3 
 
 ss 
 “None Too EAsy FOR THE COACHMAN TO PROCEED.” ents cme 
 
THE ROMANCE 
 
 o Sorts mouth 
 
 P fs 
 
 * 
 s 
 — » 
 a ~ ifs 
 ieee a oO 
 aoe a 
 Sa 
 
 Kegson Shrtet | 
 
 i Cattle 4 E oe a OT ae 
 
 Maaek See wo’ 
 - yy 
 veitgl 
 
 or 
 
 a 
 
 st 
 
 *t 
 
 > 4 
 
 Me, 
 
 iii ‘i ee Pe aly 
 * halfor 
 vans ¥ “eee 
 
 tue SM fz if fedbroke 
 i Ege 3 
 
 ace fe FGIE 
 Gpt BF baat reat 
 oats ew os Be ° 
 "4 m0 ! Won. 
 Mase Jers! xy 
 (gn mon ‘T tens 
 wy ost i 
 1 ‘ ie ; 
 ae rS. : 
 fis S 
 
 we London 
 
 OF THE ROAD 
 
 In our times no main road can 
 be so completely obliterated in 
 snowy weather as were the turnpike 
 highways of 1828 when crossing 
 opencommons. To-day, telegraph 
 poles almost invariably stand sen- 
 tinel on them to guide us in the 
 deepest snow-fall, but in the year 
 of our story all trace of the high- 
 way in such places would soon be 
 lost. 
 
 In those times coachmen and 
 horses—and it was more likely the 
 latter than the former—would 
 have to rely on a sixth sense to 
 guide them; and this is what the 
 ‘“ Regulator’s’”’ team had to do 
 when travelling this dreary © 
 common. An empty coach usually — 
 weighed the best part of a ton, — 
 
 and in the heavy going, which a 
 
 was then encountered, horses must 
 have been very hard and fit to 
 draw it the seven or eight mile 
 stages. 
 A contemporary writer de- 
 scribed England as the “‘purgatory — 
 of horses,” but one can hardly — 
 believe that this was the case. 
 Thirty years earlier no doubt — 
 
 coach-horses had a very bad time 
 
 —for there was then no limit b 
 
 law to their loads, they had longer a 
 
 stages, and a much more frequent ~ 
 use of the thong and the cruel — 
 “short tommy.” Coaches them- — 
 selves also were heavier, to say 
 
THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD 93 
 
 nothing of the coachmen, who always seemed to have run to 
 gargantuan proportions. In those days, the end of the eighteenth 
 and first decade of the nineteenth century, a coachman was chosen 
 more for the power of his arm than for the artistry of his handling of 
 four reins, and there was very little of the refinement of driving four 
 horses which came into vogue after the age of Telford and Macadam. 
 “Nimrod,” in the Sporting Magazine, tells us that the old rough- 
 and-ready method of getting a heavy coach over the country was not 
 entirely the fault of the drivers—for the whip thong was the only 
 thing that could make four wretched and often half-worn-out horses 
 pull the heavy loads through the axle-deep ruts encountered; and if 
 England was the inferno of horse-flesh of that time, Macadam and 
 Telford were certainly the saviours of the equine race. 
 
 In “‘ Nimrod’s”’ time the roads were good; in fact, there were 
 grumbles in the Press of the period that the roads themselves were soo 
 smooth, and that in consequence there was nothing in the way of 
 
  jolting to keep sleepy coachmen awake. Thousands of workmen 
 
 were always employed on these mail-coach roads across England, 
 and the Surveyor of Mail Roads was a very important ofhcial. 
 
 The same sporting writer told us that it was the pace that killed, and 
 that a mail-coach horse only lasted about three years on fast stages like 
 Hartford Bridge Flats on the Exeter Road, which was almost entirely 
 a galloping one; that a horse in perfectly fit condition might do a six- 
 or seven-mile stage at top speed, but would be very much distressed if 
 taken on a longer stage. Fourteen miles a day was the usual distance 
 for these horses—seven miles on the up and seven miles on the down 
 mails, if enough resting time could be allowed between the two stages. 
 
 To horse the mail, proprietors estimated that at least a horse 
 per mile was required, counting both sides of the road. 
 
 I cannot think that at the time the “ Regulator’”’ travelled the 
 Portsmouth Road England was the horse inferno which it has been 
 called, more especially as, in their own interests, almost all coach 
 proprietors “‘ did” their animals well. 
 
 Horses, there is no doubt, were well “‘done,’’ although on the 
 middle ground and on the night mails some “ funny ones ”’ very often 
 had to take their places in the team, “‘ three blind ’uns and a bolter’”’ 
 being quite a usual combination. 
 
Q4 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 The worst bolter, however, 
 would hardly be able to pull a 
 nineteen-hundredweight coach and 
 “@ its passengers and luggage far by 
 
 - himself. 
 3 A coachman on a stage-coach _ 
 / must have discussed many topics 
 with his passengers, and that must 
 be my excuse for leaving the 
 ‘“ Regulator”’ so often on her way 
 .,, to the sea; but while we are talking 
 “- she is always travelling along the __ 
 road, and we must imagine that all 
 this time the rattle of her bars and — 
 pole-chains can be heard. ae 
 
 Travelling over Wisley Com- 
 mon, Breach Hill, and Oakham 
 n Hew she apprenae Cobham” 
 Gate, nineteen miles five furlongs vee 
 from the Stone’s End in the 
 Borough, from which point the — 
 milestones of the Portsmouth Road 
 were measured; past the George 
 Inn at Cobham, where post-horses — 
 could be procured, and then swung 
 round by the “ White Lion” on 
 her way to Ripley. The King’s — 
 broad mail-coach highway here 
 stretched away in front of her—an _ 
 undulating stage which brought — ay 
 her to the Talbot Inn in the village _ 
 of Ripley, where she made her 
 > third change of horses. ay 
 If , But as the coach journeyed — 
 
 PES quietly over these few miles of 4 
 
 : ee pak undulating and wooded portion of a 
 w yebes the road, she had passed Pains Hill, 
 
 t _ fo Sortsmouth 
 
 eee oe 
 j 
 a 
 ma Manu aclury of 
 
 iS bbe jerseys 
 
 eae 
 "Atiroof Meet 
 Gent WEG. 
 
 Fy tt Bitchase 
 
 Bu. 
 Ack horse 
 Pee 
 
THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD 95 
 
 where Lady Carhampton was in residence. Although an old woman 
 in 1828 (she died there three years later), in her youth she was one of 
 the most beautiful women of her time. Her gardens were very cele- 
 brated, Pains Hill having some of the “finest examples of modern 
 English landscape gardening’”’ (so Pope tells us in 1797). But it was 
 a younger son of the Earl of Abercorn, who was Comptroller of the 
 Green Cloth to the Prince of Wales in 1742, who made these 
 gardens which Pope so admired. The house was afterwards sold to 
 an eccentric individual named Bard Hopkins, who was a relation of 
 the notorious ‘‘ Vulture’? Hopkins, a citizen whose rapacity obtained 
 him the nickname of “ Vulture,’’ who lived worthless and died worth 
 £300,000, making a will so that no one could inherit it until the 
 second generation; this, however, was afterwards set aside by the 
 Court of Chancery and the fortune allowed to go to the heir-at-law. 
 
 After the eccentric Bard Hopkins’s death in 1794, Pains Hill 
 came into the hands of a Scotsman of the name of Moffatt, and 
 subsequently to the Luttrell family; Col. Luttrell (the Colonel of the 
 6th Dragoon Guards), becoming the Earl of Carhampton, after 
 marrying the beautiful Miss Jane Boyd, the lady I mentioned in the 
 preceding paragraph. 
 
 The Talbot Inn at Ripley, where the “‘ Regulator” changed horses, 
 was in 1828 the most important inn in the village; an impressive 
 entrance porch under which the coaches could pull in for the comfort 
 of their passengers in wet weather, and an adjoining cosy-panelled 
 coffee-room whose roaring log fire gave warmth to the cold hands of 
 the “ Regulator’s’’ outside passengers, were its chief features. And 
 here full eight minutes were allowed for this change of horses before the 
 coach once more took the road and passed on her way down the long 
 and wide street of the village. Two other houses of hospitality stood 
 on the near side of the street: the George Inn, a picturesque Queen 
 Anne building, but not a posting-house, and at the end of the village, 
 close to the pound and forge, the venerable Anchor Inn, a house much 
 patronized by Portsmouth sailors, by travellers on the broad-wheeled 
 slow wagons, and by drovers and herdsmen. 
 
 Between this village and the town of Guildford stood Sutton 
 Place on the off side, across the River Wey, and Clandon Park 
 on the farther side of Merrow or Meroe Common. Sutton Place 
 
96 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 was a very old house which was 
 built for a Sir Richard Weston 
 in Henry VIII’s reign. Like 
 most houses built at that time, 
 it originally had a gatehouse 
 tower and enclosed courtyard, 
 but in 1789 the then Mr. Webb 
 ' Weston had this gatehouse and 
 -° courtyard removed. 
 Queen Elizabeth had stayed 
 __ therein 1591, for Brayley informs 
 .. us that a letter of the Queen’s was 
 _, dated from Sutton Place in that 
 year, when she wrote to Sir Henry 
 Weston, Kt., her ambassador in 
 aS mee: dis) France. Her Majesty’s stay at 
 Bs Aencher Qe the house seems, however, to have — 
 gs eae .”' «. brought ill-luck to it, for almost — 
 
 Paik . 
 Brams stig 
 : gate 
 
 ce 
 
 9 immediately after the departure 
 @ s of her retinue a disastrous fire 
 
 broke out owing to the enormous 
 
 fires which had been kept up 
 
 September), and the magnificent 
 gallery, 140 feet long, was com- 
 pletely destroyed. a 
 Clandon Park, on the opposite 
 side of the road to Sutton Place, 
 
 “> from it, also had its origin at the — 3 
 e {.c* time of bluff King Hal, a licencemsae 
 
 being granted to the Weston 
 
 Sia He ae ~ family, who, after ‘“‘imparking”’ 
 4 2 (as@iee and subsequently “‘disparking”’ 
 ee " ae it (according to Brayley), even- | 
 
 ~ de Londen tually sold it in 1642 to © 
 
 during her stay (it was: Iisa 
 
 and some two or more milesaway 
 
 toimpark the landand free warren 
 
THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD 97 
 
 Sir Richard Onslow of Knole (or Knoll), in the county of Surrey, 
 who again “imparked,” “‘ disparked,” or ‘‘ free-warrened”’ it, “‘ and 
 it has ever since continued to be the principal seat of the Onslow 
 family.”” This process apparently took time, for it was not until 
 1731 that the second Earl of Onslow built the house we now see. 
 On the December day in ’28 when the ‘“‘ Regulator ”’ passed Clandon 
 Park, the Earl of Onslow was living in a smaller house erected by himself 
 in the village of East Clandon, Clandon Park being empty. 
 
 Through the old town of Guildford to the White Hart Inn, its 
 chief posting-house, the ‘‘ Regulator’’ slowly travelled. No galloping 
 stage for her on these snow-clogged roads, and very little ease 
 from the incessant collar-work for her struggling teams. 
 
 ee ee 
 Sm a J } 
 ae aye y / 
 oS ek roe NY NU 
 a2 
 
 = 
 
 \ Ky Hrs My 
 
 Re Oi i ay y Uy 
 tian Ny ui i a 
 
 | Ne 4) HW) 
 
 \Ne 
 
 AX i ici nV 
 
 SS 
 
 SSS 
 <= 
 
 Ve 
 
 ‘“‘LITTLE EASE FROM THE INCESSANT COLLAR-WORK.”’ 
 
98 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 Here at the “White Hart” 
 she came to a standstill for a few 
 minutes, as parcels had to be de- 
 livered for the townspeople. A — 
 welcome “blow” for the horses _ 
 before sinking the cobbled High 
 Street, passing over the River Wey 
 at the bottom, and ascending the 
 steep hill out of the town. 
 
 Then across Pease Marsh | 
 Common, and so to the town — 
 of Godalming, where the blue ~ 
 ‘‘kerseys”’ for the Navy were — 
 made, and where the fourth ~ 
 change was standing on the road 
 in readiness outside the King’s — 
 Arms Inn—a long stage, but not 
 quite so long or so tiring a one as 
 that which now faced the waiting 
 team. | 
 
 But here, as any novice could 
 see, were four horses built more 
 for strength than for speed, for _ 
 they had the long daily pull to | 
 the top of Hindhead, a stage of — 
 twelve miles which ran from 
 
 a: . Godalming to Liphook, and whic. | 
 Tes -, included the most formidable hill 
 7 encountered on the Portsmouth — | 
 Road. : ve 
 The reason of this long stage 2a 
 was clear, as it was upon this part — 
 of the oa that the down coach 
 should meet her sister journeying — 
 to London, and the teams for this _ 
 Sts] aes et of the j journey did only 
 
 So rndog one “‘side of the road,”’ per ee 
 
See ee ee a7 i 
 
 THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD 99 
 
 as it was called; they were stabled one night at Liphook, and 
 returned to Godalming on the up “ Regulator”’ the next day, instead 
 of doing the double journey on the same day like the other changes. 
 
 A little over twelve miles of road, even on a hilly stage, was not 
 too much for fit horses to undertake, most of the other stages being 
 fourteen miles with a few hours’ rest in stables between being taken 
 out of the down mail and “‘ put to ”’ on the up. 
 
 What condition these horses must have carried after a month’s 
 daily work over this hilly country! What quarters and second thighs 
 they must have developed! I remember, many years ago, when first 
 spending a summer at Porlock, often going to watch the Porlock and 
 Lynton coach come up or down Porlock Hill—by horse-coach being 
 then the only way of getting from the one place to the other. The 
 quarters of the horses in that coach, with its daily journey over some of 
 the biggest hill country in England, were a sight to please the eye of 
 any man interested in horse-flesh; and at that time in the West, who 
 was not? 
 
 The way they pulled the loaded coach up Porlock Hill—the 
 undoing of so many motorists—was a lesson in the strength of 
 their propelling hind quarters. 
 
 It was a lesson, moreover, which I have never forgotten, and 
 my hunters always go to that country in August for condition. 
 
 The ‘‘Regulator’s’’ team, which was about to be “put to” at 
 “The King’s Arms,’ at Godalming, while her passengers were 
 partaking of a hasty luncheon, had all of them this big pulling 
 power behind the saddle, but on that day in December ’28 a 
 cock-horse had been added, owing to the heavy condition of the 
 snow-covered roads. 
 
 Under normal conditions this coach was timed to pass the up- 
 ‘Regulator’? at about 1.45 each day at a point somewhere near the 
 Seven Thorns Inn, on the Liphook side of Hindhead; but on the 
 December day in question both coaches were behind time owing 
 to the snow-fall, and their meeting might quite possibly be in a 
 snow-drift. 
 
 Little of the ordinary wheeled traffic of this busy highway had 
 so far been met, and the few travelling post-chaises that had been passed 
 had reported very heavy drifts near the Devil’s Punch Bowl. 
 
 99 
 
Joo". THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 This stage, the wildest and 
 most desolate part of the road, 
 was in bad weather always a 
 very trying one for coachmen, 
 and as more snow had begun to 
 come down the prospect was 
 not very encouraging for the 
 outside passengers or the driver, 
 who would not be sorry to see 
 the end of the stage and the 
 welcome porch of “The Anchor” 
 at Liphook. 
 
 It was, however, a consola- 
 tion for the travellers to know 
 that the “* Rocket,” leaving 
 London half an hour after the 
 ‘“ Regulator,” and running to — 
 Portsmouth in about the same 
 number of hours, was still behind 
 them, and that both their up — 
 coaches should be met some- 
 where upon this stage, and some 
 
 To Zortsmouth 
 Lf a es 
 
 use 
 
 dean Ho 
 
 accident occurred through snow- — 4 
 drifts, help might be available 
 from either direction. | 1a 
 
 Slowly and steadily the five 
 horses now harnessed in the 
 “Regulator” dragged her through _ 
 Milford, past the White Lion 
 Inn at Mousehill, over Witley — 
 
 opts 3 Brtsce Jsland eevee Hindhead Gibbet. 
 cine ope 6 SRE cy (hy Seen through the falling snow 
 o London | ‘ from the coach top, the ostler’s 
 
 ON Es wen 
 
 comfort to know that if an — 
 
 Common by Hammer Ponds, to 
 the long pull upwards to the 
 Devil’s Punch Bowl and : 
 
THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD IOI 
 
 Z iy af Mi 8 
 
 UY eS y g 
 
 Ns EE VILE 
 Ez ~ 
 o/ a HY A 
 WAAAZ 
 
 “To THE LonNG PULL UPWARDS TO THE DEVIL’s PuNCH BOWL.” 
 
 boy astride the cock-horse soon became a grey shadow huddled 
 forward on his mount, only his whip arm moving jerkily up and 
 down, while the steam from the horses rose below these hardy 
 travellers to Portsmouth. 
 
 The farther up the rise the ‘‘ Regulator”’ travelled, the more the 
 force of the wind, which had been for some time blowing, seemed to 
 increase, driving the snow in whirling masses in front and around the 
 coach, and making it increasingly difficult for her passengers to keep 
 the flakes from descending down the backs of their necks. 
 
 Capes were pulled up over heads, mufHers and collars given an 
 extra twist and hoist, as the coach slowly toiled up the hill, while 
 snow-drifts began to accumulate in every hollow and the road itself 
 became almost undiscernible. 
 
 Da 
 
Bee FU eS ey ee at aa Re 
 a ae eee” 
 
 102 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 Crack! went the post-boy’s short whip on ahead. Swish! went 
 the coachman’s long thong from the box-seat as he urged his 
 powerful team to further exertions and the coach wheels slowly 
 and silently churned through the ever-deepening snow. a 
 
 Half-way up the ascent a halt for a few moments to give a “‘ blow” 
 to the steaming horses, and then on and up once more towards the 
 gibbet with its creaking chains on the summit of the Punch Bowl 
 itself. ; 
 
 Yaa 
 
 Eo yr. 
 
 sa) 
 6) sw 
 UY, 
 
 ayy 
 
 op. y 
 
 KK 
 ce 
 
THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD 103 
 
 Almost at the top the slight banks of snow on either side of 
 the road, which had so far been a guide to the position of the 
 highway, seemed to disappear, and at the same moment there was 
 a cry from the ostler’s lad as his horse sank into a drift of wind-blown 
 snow. 
 
 As the ‘‘ Regulator”? pulled up, the guard jumped down and 
 struggled forward as best he could to help the post-boy and his 
 plunging lead horse trying to get out of the drift. Having extricated 
 and placed him on a more or less solid foothold, he proceeded to 
 walk by his side and so feel for the turnpike track. Whether or no the 
 coach was still on the highway was impossible to tell, as all signs of 
 its edges had now completely disappeared, and it was only by the 
 position of the gibbet above him that the driver had any idea as to 
 its direction. 
 
 On the right-hand side of the coach the ground fell away into the 
 bowl, but in 1828 the highway went right up to the gibbet and not, 
 as it does now, some little way below it. 
 
 Then the packhorse tracks each side of it were distinctly 
 marked; in many places deep worn ways, resembling a Devonshire 
 lane. 
 
 Through Hindhead Village can still be discovered these hoofways 
 which ran along by the side of the turnpike road; but to-day they pass 
 through private gardens and grounds, the Portsmouth Road now taking 
 a slightly different line. 
 
 Below the “ Regulator,” far down in the Punch Bowl, was a 
 gipsy encampment—a dozen or more tents, a few rough huts, and 
 many shaggy ponies and horses standing in the snow marked the 
 spot where some years before the ‘‘ broom squires’ had taken up their 
 home. 
 
 These gipsies were at that time permanent squatters on the land 
 and were the original Hindhead population. Their descendants still 
 own land in the Punch Bowl, and, as original pioneers, have a great 
 contempt for modern Hindhead and its population. 
 
 At a later time they strongly resented the encroachments of land 
 speculators and builders on this part of the country, a land which is 
 now becoming so over-built and over-populated that its wildness and 
 beauty will soon completely disappear. 
 
104 
 
 m~ 
 
 o_— 
 Shee 
 
 ~~ 
 ‘“WHILE THE COCK-HORSE Boy UNHITCHED His Horse.” 
 
 2? 
 
 A few minutes’ ‘“‘ blow” on the summit for the sturdy team, while 
 the cock-horse boy unhitched his horse, and the stage-coach began the 
 run down to Bramshott and the Seven Thorns Inn—an inn which h 
 so bad a reputation at that time that very few of the coaches car 
 to pull up at it. ) 
 
 Footpads and highwaymen had given it an unsavoury reputatio 
 and road travellers were generally glad when they were safely past: i 
 inhospitable doors and neighbourhood. | 
 
 All this stage of the road was a mass of common and pine wone 
 and, with the exception of the inn just mentioned, not a house 
 healings was passed. : 
 
a 
 * 
 
 THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD 105 
 
 Although on this December day but few post-chaises and travelling 
 chariots had been met, the Portsmouth Road at ordinary times was a 
 very busy highway. All through the day crowds of horse-drawn 
 slow-moving traffic travelled its macadamized surface; for in pre- 
 railway times the turnpike roads of England were very plentifully 
 sprinkled with traffic, and even in winter when snow covered the 
 ground the roads were not entirely deserted. I do not mean that the 
 Portsmouth Road had the Piccadilly Circus appearance that it now has 
 on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. 
 
 I cannot understand why all these people take the trouble to motor 
 from Piccadilly Circus, when they can see just the same effect—the 
 back view of the car in front of them—by motoring round and round 
 
 THE ANCHOR INN AT LIPHOOK. 
 
i ") " ey! oc 4 7p a 1 
 
 106 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 it all day; but there is no doubt that in the year of my story neither 
 the Portsmouth nor any other of our big turnpike roads were ever 
 lonely, but rather they were full of trafhe. 
 
 What a difference there was, however, to the crowding then and 
 now, when all “Romance of the Road” has disappeared, completely 
 driven off the highway by the rush of pace! In eighteen hundred and 
 twenty-eight the fastest conveyance from London only just got to 
 Portsmouth in a day, whereas now we go down in our car between 
 luncheon and tea and return after dinner; but our ancestors had the 
 mud and dust of macadam in quantities which are unknown to us— 
 mud and dust possibly picturesque, but certainly unpleasant to live with. 
 
 No wonder road travellers welcomed the Anchor Inn at Liphook. 
 
 Noe 
 Nea, 
 
 (gl aaa aah 
 
 “THE PICTURE THE ANCHOR INN WOULD MAKE ON A SUMMER MORNING,” 
 
 q . 
 Ve 
 
 Although, on that December afternoon, the historic chestnut tree _ 
 which stands in front of its beautiful Queen Anne fagade gave no shelter _ 
 to lounging idlers, in summer-time it was the meeting-place of the _ 
 
THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD 107 
 
 entire village. Under its shade the news of the world was circulated 
 to the inhabitants of Liphook as it was brought into the town by the 
 guards of the London or Portsmouth coaches. 
 
 To this tree had the news of Nelson’s naval victories been brought 
 by cheering guards, gaily decorated horses and coachmen, a few years 
 before, and in 1827 the inhabitants had “‘huzza-ed”’ the be-flagged 
 coaches as they had galloped through the village shouting the news of 
 the Battle of Navarino. 
 
 Lb BD, WSS, 44 
 a LN AG 
 
 A ome N aa e9 1) aN s 
 
 is b Bye ‘ if "/ f ! fy 
 
 « 
 i £3 
 WIAA 
 et li ns 
 
 en 
 iy, 
 Mi fi; 
 Lan 
 
 z; p tough hy vib | M Wh 
 WY) : 7, Ly jf" [ a 
 
 LEN 2 
 a lh {Het q 
 4 Ni {2 
 We 
 WN : 
 
 pad AA 
 
 Se 
 
 “THE NEws OF NELSON’s VICTORIES.” - aS 
 
 “The Anchor,” as its name signified, was a naval house, but it 
 had also housed many Royal personages, and its cellars had often 
 held for the night French prisoners of war as they journeyed to 
 London. 
 
 On this winter day, “The Anchor’’ presented a very different 
 appearance to the picture it would make on a summer morning. 
 
 Snow a foot deep now covered its roof and the roadway, and while 
 the fresh team were being ‘put to,’”’ the welcome and warmth of its 
 interior were fully appreciated by the coach passengers. 
 
108 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 ? 
 
 Soon after leaving Liphook the ‘‘ Regulator’s ’’ sister coach on the 
 up-journey to London came in sight, and a short way behind her the 
 ‘“* Rocket,”’ also London bound. 
 
 Passing another motor-car or, as we sit in a train, flashing by 
 another train is a most uninteresting proceeding—just a crash, a rush of 
 air, and it is over; but meeting a coach-and-four on the road was a 
 very different performance. 
 
 As soon as the two guards sighted each other they would blow a 
 welcome; then, very slowly as it would seem to us, the eight horses 
 would converge together, pole-chains rattling, bars a-tingle, until 
 they met, one on each side of the highway. 
 
 ‘“How THE OLD GREY’S NEAR HiInpD LEG WAS STANDING.” 
 
 ? 
 
 On this day as the two “ Regulators”? met, each coachman pulled 
 up to hear from his confrére the news of the road. Warnings as to 
 snow-drifts ; where the extra cock-horse was to be found; how the old — 
 grey’s near hind was standing; or about the new odd-coloured leader te 
 for the Horndean team. se 
 
 ‘Two minutes’ pause—a little horsey gossip, a final cryptic “Don’t 
 forget Sally” from the up-guard, and the two teams continued thei 
 journeys to Portsmouth and London respectively. Ea 
 
 Once again the Portsmouth stage struggled on, passing throug 
 Rake to Sheet Bridge and then into the town of Petersfield; but, jus 
 
ee ee a a 
 
 THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD 109 
 
 as she toiled through Rake, the guard pulled out his 
 key bugle and vigorously played ‘‘Sally in our Alley.” 
 Of all the girls that are so sweet, 
 There’s none like pretty Sally. 
 
 From a farm window into which the passengers 
 on the top of the coach were able to see, Sally, the 
 farmer’s paralysed daughter, waved welcome to her 
 friend the guard, as she sat propped up in her invalid 
 chair—thanks for this bugle solo, which he played 
 for her each day as the coach passed by. In all 
 weathers Pretty Sally always had her musical enter- 
 tainment, sometimes one tune, sometimes another, 
 but never was either 
 “Regulator” allowed 
 to pass without giving 
 this poor cripple her 
 daily solo, the one bright 
 spot in her monotonous 
 existence. 
 
 Many guards and 
 coachmen on the road had 
 friends of this description 
 who perhaps had never 
 been spoken to and yet 
 were known to them as 
 well as many of their own 
 most intimate friends. 
 Oft-times on a journey a 
 coachman’s whip-hand 
 would go up to his hat in 
 salute to acquaintances 
 whom he passed daily at 
 the same spot and yet with 
 whom he had never held 
 converse. 
 
 Courtesy of the Road 
 
 ‘‘ PASSING THE NEws.” =“* Romance of the 
 
> 
 
 Pe se 6 lal 
 
 a 
 
 “<3 
 
 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 IIo 
 
 THE Top oF PoORTSDOWN 
 
 > 
 4 
 
THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD III 
 
 Road” !—to-day it has vanished; but in 1828 we had time for 
 these things—time to recognize our friends and acquaintances as we 
 drove past them, and time to do a kindly act for some poor invalid or 
 cripple if opportunity occurred. 
 
 Some of the towns on the Portsmouth Road have made very few 
 alterations in one hundred years, and Petersfield with its market 
 square and old coaching inns is one of them. If we pass through the 
 town to-day, we can see our fellow-passengers of the “‘ Regulator” 
 stage-coach, if we have any romance or imagination, walking its streets ; 
 but we, who sit comfortably in our saloon cars, cannot realize the 
 hardihood required to face the hill-tops of the Portsmouth Road on 
 
 UO | |] th y/ 
 bata a He i Y } py 
 ZA\|| ||| ‘4 Uf, Pi 
 rae itll ] 2 yy tal Le A = \ SS 
 t | | (A ttn he 
 
 Te 
 | aA 
 
 \ i iN! { | | \ 
 
 i. 
 
 ’ . 
 << ( \ i 
 \ 
 THE OUTSIDE OF A STAGE-COACH. 
 
 the outside of a stage-coach. Ours is an age of luxury in travel; but 
 our ancestors sat on the roof of the “‘ Regulator”’ from 8 a.m. until 
 6 p.m. on this winter’s day in ’28, and if they were “ three-bottle 
 men’”’ at the end of the journey they certainly had well earned the 
 right to be so. 
 
 At Horndean the last team was put in the coach, and then over the 
 forest of Bere country, past White Lane End to Purbrook House and 
 Portsdown Hill, from the top of which our destination came into full 
 view. 
 
 Dropping down to Cosham, the coach rattled over the swing 
 bridge which gave access to Portsea Island and then through Hilsea 
 to “‘ The Fountain Inn at Portsmouth town,”’ and came to the end of 
 
 her journey. 
 
‘Thomas Oldfield, Esq., The Fire House 
 Countess de Grey 
 
 Marchioness of Exeter 
 
 Lord Gifford 
 
 Lord Viscount Clifden 
 
 Earl of Bristol 
 
 Earl of Bessborough 
 
 Marchioness of Downshire 
 
 H.R.H. the Duke of Clarence, Bushy Park 
 
 C. Raphael, Esq., Ember Court 
 Lord H. Fitzgerald, Boyle Farm 
 
 J. Spicer, Esq., Esher Place 
 
 Sir E, Nagle, Bart. 
 
 Sir John Frederick, Bart., Burwood Park 
 Edw. Ball Hughes, Esq., Oatlands Park 
 
 John Webb Weston, Esq., Sutton Place 
 
 C. Spicer, Esq., Stoke Hill 
 Mrs. More Molyneux, St. Catherine’s Hill 
 Capt. Gunning Loseley 
 
 N. Godbold, Esq., Westwood Place 
 
 Viscount Middleton, Pepperharrow Park 
 Henry Budd, Esq., Foley House 
 
 C. Alderson, Esq., Ashford House 
 Major Boyce, Rose Cottage 
 
 Capt. Brydges, The Hermitage 
 
 Mrs. Richards, North House 
 Dr. McArthur, Hunton House 
 
 Col. Conway, The Grove 
 C. Anneslie, Esq., Mount Pleasant 
 
 Thos. Thistlethwayte, Esq. Southwick 
 Park 
 
 | ONE HUNDRED 
 
 Wandsworth 
 
 Putney Heath 
 
 Kingston 
 
 Thames Ditton 
 
 Esher 
 
 Cobham 
 Ripley 
 
 Guildford 
 
 Godalming 
 
 Mousehill 
 Liphook 
 
 Petersfield 
 
 Butser Hill 
 
 Horndean 
 
 Purbrook 
 Portsdown Hill 
 
 Hilsea, 
 Portsmouth 
 
 II2 
 
 Marquess of Stafford, Melrose Hall 
 Earl Spencer, Wimbledon Park 
 
 T. Tooke, Esq., Octagon House 
 Earl of Liverpool, Coombe House 
 C. N. Palmer, Esq., Norbiton Place 
 W. Disney, Esq., Elmers 
 
 F. Robertson, Esq., Woodbines 
 
 Compton Weekes, Esq., Barwell Coutts 
 Mrs. Terry, Esher Lodge 
 H.R.H. Prince of Saxe-Coburg, Claremon 
 
 Park 
 
 Countess of Carhampton, Pains Hill 
 H. Coombe, Esq., Cobham Park 
 
 Lord King, Ockham Park 
 Earl of Onslow, Clandon Park 
 
 J. W. Ladbrooke, Esq., Shalford House 
 
 H, Farmer, Esq., Gosden House 
 Lord Grantley, Wonersh 
 
 C. Taylor, Esq., Holycombe 
 C. Rolls, Esq., Milland House 
 
 General Hugonin, Nursted House 
 Hon. Sir C. Paget, Fair Oak Lodge — 
 
 Sir H. Featherstonhaugh, Up Park 
 
 Sir W. Knighton, Bart., Greenhook _ 
 Capt. Sir M. Seymour, Horndean Hous 
 
 G. Morant, Esq., Purbrook House 
 
 J. Burrell, Esq., Stubbington Lodge : 
 
EPILOGUE 
 
 ‘““ Mummy, you know Susan’s neck ? ”’ 
 
 Baics..dear. whatapout it 9” 
 
 ‘“ W-e-I-l—she’s fallen into the pond—up to it,” and my book is 
 rather like this little story, because what ought to have come at the 
 beginning is appearing last of all, and your showman is only now 
 introducing to you some of his collaborators. 
 
 An Epilogue is but an afterthought, but even now a few lines about 
 the lives of some of these collaborators may not be out of place. 
 
 A short time ago at the “ Lygon Arms,”’ Broadway, a youth and 
 maiden, while imbibing a cocktail, happened to look at a sketch which 
 was hanging up in the room where your showman also was taking his 
 pre-luncheon apéritif. 
 
 “It’s signed Cecil Aldin,”’ said the youth. 
 
 ‘““ He must be a very old man now,” replied the maiden... and, 
 again, a commercial traveller for a persevering publisher once tried to 
 sell to a shopkeeper a print from one of the author’s pictures. ‘‘ Cecil 
 Aldin again,” said the prospective buyer; “‘ it’s time he was dead.” 
 
 Notwithstanding these two true (or so true, whichever you like) 
 stories, and what must obviously be the patriarchal age of your 
 impresario, he cannot himself remember the Romance of the 
 Road of 1828.. His show, therefore, has had to be produced in 
 collaboration with others who lived and flourished at the time. People 
 who saw the Road when there was Romance on it, and not as it is 
 today, “‘ a sink of mechanical toil.” 
 
 James Pollard, Henry Alken, J. F. Herring, Nimrod, Patterson and 
 many others have kept record of the Romance of the Road of 
 1828, and to all of these his pen and brush are deeply indebted. 
 
 James Roque, Henry Teesdale, John Cary, ‘“‘map-fellers,” have 
 been his assistants in cartography. 
 
 ? 
 
 JAMES POLLARD.—There was no artist who devoted his work so 
 exclusively to inns, coaches, and the road as Pollard, and for that 
 reason he should come first. 
 
 His horses may seem to us a little stiff and conventional in movement, 
 his coaches, to our modern minds, may perhaps be too minute in detail, 
 
 113 P 
 
114 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 but to the student of the road every one of Pollard’s pictures tells a 
 story, for they are pictures by a coachman and artist combined. Very 
 high artistic merit they may not have, but they hand down to us a story of 
 horses, harness, travellers, mails, guards, and coachmen, which no 
 other limner of the period has been able to do. : 
 
 I can find no, record that James Pollard had ever driven a team : 
 
 himself other than the record he has left in his pictures, but no painter 
 could be so accurate in detail and have so many side-line or by-play 
 coaching incidents in his prints, unless he was an expert at driving a 
 team himself. 
 
 Sir Walter Gilbey has recorded that James’s father was a Newcastle 
 man, an engraver who came to London in 1782 at the age of twenty- 
 ‘seven, but James, my collaborator, was born in 1797, and was, therefore, 
 thirty-one years of age when my Bath mail and Portsmouth stage-coach 
 journeyed the road. 
 
 Seven years before, he had exhibited his picture, “The North = 
 Country Mails at the ‘Peacock’ at Islington,” at the Royal Academy __ 
 
 and a reproduction of it is included in my book. 
 
 He exhibited many other of his paintings of coaching subjects at 
 most of the London galleries, and in later days innumerable repro- 
 
 ductions have been made from his work. 
 
 He lived to well over sixty-two years of age, but the date of he ia 
 
 demise is not definitely known. 
 
 HENRY ALKEN was a contemporary of James Pollard, but — 
 rather older, being forty-four years of age at the time of my “ Romance ~ 
 of the Road.” To Alken the world is indebted for some delightful 
 oil-paintings of coaches by moonlight, which, I believe, have never 
 
 been reproduced as prints. 
 
 Today his pictures are more valuable than those of James Pollard, 
 but he made hunting subjects more than coaching pictures his chief 
 work, From what Sir Walter Gilbey says of him in his Animal 3 
 Painters, he seems to have been rather a morose individual, very 
 
 adverse to any kind of criticism of his own work, and a martinet in his 
 home. An untidy and badly turned-out man hiresele yet he always put 
 the smartest of smart men in his hunting pictures. 
 
 Henry Alken has not been so big a collaborator as Pollard in this — 4 
 
 Ww 
 
 4 
 7 
 
<i 
 
 NORTH COUNTRY MAILS AT “THE PEACOCK,” 
 ISLINGTON. (After James Pottarp) 
 
ey 
 
Ct a. 
 
 Panted byJames Pollard 
 
 ~ London, Published October 20 1825 by Jon® Watson. 7 Vere Soret. Bond. Street. 
 
 NORTE-COUNTIRY MAILS at raz PEACOCK, ISLINGTON. 
 
 "Engraved by T Sutherland 
 
EPILOGUE 115 
 
 road romance, but he has helped in his pictures to perpetuate the 
 atmosphere of those coaching times. 
 
 JOHN F. HERRING, however, is the sporting artist about whose 
 private life we know most, and here was the ideal combination for a 
 painter of coaching pictures, for he was for some time a stage coachman 
 as well as an artist. In 1828 Herring was thirty-three years old, but 
 when he was eighteen he had left his home in Surrey and begun his 
 artistic career by painting animals on the door panels of coaches for 
 coachbuilders, the panels on the doors of the “‘ Reindeer,” ‘‘ White 
 Lion,” and ‘‘ Commander-in-Chief”’ coaches being painted by him. 
 
 Soon after executing these he became the professional coachman 
 on the ‘“‘ Nelson’ stage-coach, which ran between Lincoln and 
 Wakefield. At the age of twenty-five, and while still professional 
 coachman on the “‘ Nelson,” he exhibited his first picture in the Royal 
 Academy, but later settled down seriously to his art and gave up his 
 driving appointment. 
 
 He is known more by his portraits of winners of the classic races 
 and agricultural horse subjects than by his coaching pictures, but when 
 we see a stage-coach painted by him we know that not a buckle or 
 terret is misplaced. 
 
 He lived until he was seventy years of age. 
 
 “NIMROD” (J. C. Apperley), another of my collaborators, was the 
 great sporting writer of 1828, and his articles in the Sportmg Magazine 
 and essay on “ The Road,” as it was at that time—which has so often 
 been reprinted—has helped considerably in the production of this 
 peep-show. 
 
 PATTERSON and CARY rendered aid with their road books; and 
 to Henry Teesdale, for his wonderful maps of the roads in 1828, my 
 generous thanks are due. Even today his “ English Atlas,’ published 
 in 1828, always travels with me when on a motor journey, because it is 
 so much more clear and distinct than any maps ever published since. 
 
 When our forefathers travelled they either carried the bulky Patterson 
 or one of Cary’s ‘““High Roads,” which were made in more portable form. 
 
 These strip maps were on separate sheets on a scale of one inch to 
 the mile, and kept folded up in a neat leather case. 
 
116 THE ROMANCE OF THE ROAD 
 
 They gave every “‘gentleman’s seat situate on,” or “‘ seen from”’ the 
 road, the chief inns, and the different turnpike gates, with particulars 
 as to the trusts. A few pages of Cary’s strip map of 1799 will be 
 interesting to study and are reproduced in the concluding pages of 
 this volume. They show us who lived near the highway, and give a 
 very clear idea of the small number of houses then to be seen. 
 
 Although the originals of these maps were made twenty-eight years 
 before our journeys they show very clearly the number of toll gates at 
 which we then had to pay toll; but we must remember that when my 
 little coaches went on their journeys a very large number of these pikes 
 had been done away with. 
 
 Map A shows all these trusts around London and the gates they 
 controlled, and the subsequent maps give us a clear picture of some 
 portions of the roads we travelled over as they were a few years 
 previously. 
 
 Just in the same way as the coaches dawdled across the countryside 
 so we could dawdle on, but the coachman must now raise his hat to 
 you for the last time: 
 
 ‘“ Ladies and Gentlemen, I leave you here,” 
 
 and your showman must move on to another pitch. 
 
 att Tae 
 
CARY’S 
 
 Survey of the High Roads 
 
 FROM 
 TO 
 Hampton Court, Ware, 
 B agshoe, Bishops Stortford, 
 Oakingham, Chipping Ongar, 
 Binfield, Chelasford, 
 Windsor, Gravesend, 
 Maidenhead, Rochester, 
 Ligh Uycombe, | Maidstone, 
 Amersham, Lunbridge Wells, 
 Rickmansworth. Last Grinsted, 
 fring, Ryegate, 
 SiMlbans, Dorking, 
 Welwyn, Guildford, 
 Hertford, Richmond . 
 Ona Scale of one Inch to a Mile; 
 WHEREIN 
 Every GENTLEMAN's SEAT, sctuate on, or seen from the 
 ROAD, 
 
 (however dustant/ are laid down,with the Name of the Lofsefsor, 
 to which is added 
 
 The Number of INNS on each feparate Route ; 
 
 4LSO, 
 Lhe different TURNPIKE GATES , shewing 
 The Connection whtch one trust has with 
 
 another. 
 
 London : frinted for J.Cary, Engrave: & Map seller, the corner of Arundel Street, Strand. 
 July 171799. 
 
 177 
 
rhs SS ~ 
 
 AK, 
 
 a A = 
 \ _ —_——_ 
 a a ee 
 
 SET I. AE. 
 
 : << 
 
 Berti, aN ss RRL ca 
 
 sh aaeeuntatagss. sc SN SS 
 Sepeganaeg | we RR SSS 
 
 Nos ogbuppoy f 
 aN bows au0g 99 Choy /sbuopqn 
 
 ALL ITLL | ee? 
 arereaee 
 
 Sanpays nus 2g egun peq \e 
 -.osep Ingo ito Sfedypmaeg mz JNA 
 Way Pret NOT AOPUNS Tp 40) 2D by ha 35) 
 
 ey eg een 
 
 Burpoys 4q umays UuoqINALE 7p pup 
 PRRRETE EREIAC TE FROG TUBE. 
 ap Supine 4 pop N07 Yr 
 
 ‘TIOL AVANAS 
 
 Us 
 
 “wma NOITLVPNVTdXDT © 
 
 \| 
 PAN | 
 
 pu TER Mt 1 mo Dy A mn | 
 cenit i Hae a il 
 
 118 
 
INNS 
 Fulham Richmond 
 Kings Arms Star £ Garter, 
 Putney Qstle & Talbot. 
 
 LiWilloughky deBroke%} f 
 the Black Horsé 
 
 Ald BrookWatsong 
 M Bow les yzzk V7 
 
 oRpos wn 
 
 ii i 
 
 Published byS Cary Juby1 lag. 
 
 I1g 
 
my 
 
 BRENT QYFORD 
 
 Kew 
 Lodge 
 
 KewBridgeh.} barDicker 
 
 Siar & bart ®% 
 
 Gu. 
 
 lest a \ aaa da 1 Hampton Court 
 it 
 
 MKingn M’Simkin 
 
 M™ Wildmat 
 
 aS 
 
 5Mg $222 
 Turnham e=Gre en 
 
 et nei 
 
 otf 
 
 MM", Bedtord 
 
 trong 
 
 e270 Savage 
 
 MBou at 2 
 
 HogmoreL ane Turnpike Cate. gang 
 ‘ “Unig wih lode 
 Kensington f 
 Hon Mi: Lagh-4\} 
 
 ) 
 
 Dae - 
 Gore S44, Drake.’ 
 og Mi Marsh eck 
 
 22 
 Knightsbridge 
 
 BRydefark Turnp. 
 
 mM 
 
 Te 
 09 cil I | 
 
 VET Cole 
 
 (i Countels of laithlow 
 aM Baron ferryn 
 MM Stone 
 
 a T oN i 
 
 uN 
 
 Published by J Cary Julyi/4799 . 
 
 I2Z0 
 
 1 
 | 
 
Belfont 
 
 i} ie 
 oa hil Wir “Creat 
 abies 
 
 MN edz 
 
 RENAE yA a : | re i Ho 
 
 rh | 
 AANA OF 
 
 Published by J.C ary Jubys!2799 
 
 will 
 
 I2I 
 
M Ashwood 
 
 = Be BL ai | 
 a a 
 
 ewell Green 
 
 ti Gapt’Bowyer 
 * Ha ly Green 
 
 Lublished by J.Cary July 12799. 
 
 I22 
 
CranfordBridge, Colnbrook 
 White Hart. White Hart, George ‘ 
 
 Ditton Green 
 LBeaulieus Arms 
 Kings Head Windsor 
 
 Kings Arms || WhiteHart, Castle 
 
 ine -acil ntl ( 
 [Ha chet ence tantt 
 oa 
 
 i IMS 
 
 Longford 
 
 a 
 White Hi : 
 Public House 
 
 ‘North Street 
 
 2a lak foi er 
 
 | 
 A - 
 an es {Ns 
 Do Mr rns : 
 1p} a % 
 
 ( NS ah COLN([BROOK 
 
 n on mn cc. 
 it 
 
 20 is eoehtca d Ih Ht 
 4s te an es cc wi i 
 
 My 
 eo cc 
 
 Published by J.C ary Jub121799 
 
 123 
 
SEARCH INSTITUTE 
 
 iin 
 
 3 3125 01712 7719 
 
“ 
 
 ie 
 
 7s 
 
 ie ec 3 eke: ah a a om Basta oe 
 fe ORE sama Ane i upetione tes 2 eer