Coach and six

“ And so, instead of the handsome stylish coach, that a gentleman might ride on without shame, with its dashing four-in-hand, we have got this dirty, shabby, yellow thing, with its unicorn team of skin and bone, a driver that old Jack Simons, the coachman, would not have had for a stable-helper, and an urchin for guard, who would be a disgrace to a dung-cart! ”

“ The coachman flanks his leaders, who break into a gallop; the guard sounds his triumphant bugle; the coach bounds over the noble bridge that spans a stream covered with craft; public buildings, guildhalls, and county gaols rise on each side. ”

“ The thin young woman is got upon the roof by dint of a great deal of pulling and pushing, and helping and trouble; and she repays it by expressing her solemn conviction that she will never be able to get down again.
“‘All right!’ sings out the guard at last,332 jumping up as the coach starts, and blowing his horn directly afterwards, in proof of the soundness of his wind. ‘Let ’em go, Harry; give ’em their heads!’ cries the coachman—and off we start as briskly as if the morning were ‘all right,’ as well as the coach.” ”

“ No connoisseur in coaching matters would condescend to travel as a regular thing by a three-horse coach, and so those supporters were alienated, and, against their will, driven to the railway; and the “Swallow,” badly winged, carried only frightened old women who looked upon steam-engines as wild beasts. As they died away, no one took their places, and the old concern became a pair-horse coach. ”

“ The appointments of an English coach are no less elegant than its form. A portly looking coachman seated on a very high coach-box, well dressed, wearing white gloves, a nosegay in his button-hole, and his chin enveloped in an enormous cravat, drives four horses perfectly matched and harnessed, and as carefully groomed as when they excited admiration in the carriages of Grosvenor and Berkeley Squares. ”

“ How glad we were when the coachman, as he climbed up into his lofty seat, and gathered up the reins in his capacious hand, gave the signal, ‘Let ’em go!’ How beautiful it was to us lads to see the coach bound off like a thing of life, while the guard blew a farewell flourish on his horn, and the horses settled down steadily to their work after a playful flourish or two! ”

“ The coach looks like a bobbed rooster with his tail down, for the dusty boot protrudes immensely at the rear, and all the weight appears to be on the hind seat. Up rolls the coach, the driver making his whip crack like Fanny Ellsler’s castanets in the “cracovienne,” and with a prodigious attempt at creating a sensation—the machine stops at Hamble’s. ”

“ He made a point of going to sleep at the coach’s time. He despised gadding about; he looked upon coaches as things that ought to be indicted; as disturbers of the peace of mankind; as restless, bustling, busy, horn-blowing contrivances, quite beneath the dignity of men, and only suited to giddy girls that did nothing but chatter and go a-shopping. ‘We know nothing about coaches here, sir,’ John would say, if any unlucky stranger made inquiry touching the offensive vehicles; ‘we don’t book for ‘em; we’d rather not; they’re more trouble than they’re worth, with their noise and rattle. ”

“ The crowd that spread itself over this immense expanse was as rich representation of human life off its guard as one need see. One’s first fate after arriving, if one is perched upon a coach, is to see the coach guided, by means best known to the coachman himself, through the tremendous press of vehicles and pedestrians, introduced into a precinct roped off and guarded from intrusion save under payment of a fee, and then drawn up alongside of the course, as nearly as possible opposite the grand stand and the winning post. ”

“ Neither has he the agility of the artist on the Comet, for he is nearly double his size; but he is a strong powerful man, and might be called a pattern card of the heavy coachman of the present day—in other words, of a man who drives a coach which carries sixteen passengers instead of fourteen, and is rated at eight miles an hour instead of ten. “What room in the Regulator?” says our friend to the waiter, as he comes to announce its arrival. “Full inside, sir, and in front; but you'll have the gammon board all to yourself, and your luggage is in the hind boot.” ”

“ He wonders at your fidgetiness,—"where could we be better than we are, thus silting, thus consulting?"—"prefers, for his part, a state of rest to locomotion,"—with an eye all the while upon the coachman—till at length, waxing out of all patience, at your want of it, he breaks out into a pathetic remonstrance at the fellow for detaining us so long over the time which he had professed, and declares peremptorily, that "the gentleman in the coach is determined to get out, if he does not drive on that instant." ”

“ In the hall of the Coachmakers’ Company, in Noble Street, Cheapside, is a picture of Hyde Park Corner in 1796, painted by Dagaty, in which is an old stage coach; the hinder part has a boot and guard’s seat attached to the body as in modern stage coaches, but the box is detached from the body and on the beds, as described above; the panels of the body are very deep, and on the upper quarters are painted two large stars, from which we may conjecture that it is a mail coach. ”

“ Grand churches whose spires soar away, away far into the sky, astonish our newly-awakened vision as the coachman carefully guides the coach through the narrow and crooked streets, in which the shadows from cornices and roof-tops lie so black and sharp that none but he who has driven here before could surely bring this coach safely through. Once or twice we have quailed as he has driven straight at some solid wall, and have breathed again when it has proved to be only some oblique monstrous silhouetted image cast athwart the81 way. ”

“ The carriage was waiting, the horses were restive, the coachman sat on the box, and the footmen were in their places.
'Now, there's just one thing which is rather important,' said the fairy godmother, as Cinderella entered the coach, 'and you must not forget it. I can do this, that, and the other, but at midnight there's an end to it all. You must leave the ball before the clock strikes twelve, for, if you don't, you'll be in a pretty pickle. Your coach will turn into a pumpkin again, your coachman into a rat, your horses into mice, and your footmen into lizards ”

“ The smallest man in the world, in the biggest carriage in the world, could so little be looked upon as an entity, that I count his coach as an empty ceremonial coach, in which the coachman shook him about like a dry kernel in a walnut. ”

“ These stage-coaches are admirably managed: relays of horses are ready at every post: as soon as the coach drives up they are brought out, and we are scarcely detained ten minutes. The coachman seems to know every body along the 363road; he drops a parcel at one door, nods to a woman at another, delivers a message at a third, and stops at a fourth to receive a glass of spirits or a cup of ale, which has been filled for him as soon as the sound of his wheels was beard. ”

“ With a swag over my shoulder, I made my way to the coach office about five o'clock in the afternoon. The coach by which I proposed to go was just driving up.
"Hullo, old fellow!" said an acquaintance of mine. "Off to the diggings?"
"Yes, I'm going to have a try."
"So long then; wish you luck."
Having bought a ticket, I took an inside seat, not caring to advertise myself in big letters on the front page. I might as well be under the gaze of the hundred eyes of the Argus as sit and be conned like a book by every passer-by. When a coach trundles along any one who runs, or walks, may read. ”

“ In thirty seconds more they are off—“the staid and steady team,” so styled by the proprietor of the coach. “Let 'em go! and take care of yourselves,” says the artist, so soon as he is firmly seated upon his box; and this is the way they start. The near leader rears right on end ”

“ When a Coachman cam up, and said—Sir, will ye ride?
Gee, ho, Dobbin, [Pg 66] &c.
Wey, smash noo—whe's thou, man?—How, what dis thou mean?—
I drive the best coach, sir, that ever was seen.—
To ride iv a coach! Smash, says Geordy, aw's willin'—
Aw'll ride i' yor coach though it cost me ten shillin'!
So Gee, ho, Dobbin, &c.
Then into the coach Geordy claver'd wi' speed,
And out at the window he popp'd his greet heed:—
Pray, where shall I drive, sir—please give me the name?
Drive us a' the toon ower, man, an' then drive us hyem! ”

“ An amusing tale, declared to be true, has been told of the possibilities of a coach in the love-making sort. It was about 1780 that a young gentleman, anxious to win the good graces of a lady, and lacking other opportunities, engaged all the remaining inside seats of the coach between Glasgow and Edinburgh by which he knew she would travel. ”

“ The eight fine black horses which draw the bride’s State carriage have been daily exercised together, wearing the heavy red brass-studded harness. The coach itself is made almost entirely of glass in the upper panels, and is most beautifully painted and decorated. Three gorgeously-clad footmen cling behind it, and two equally gorgeous pages hold a seemingly precarious and uncomfortable footing behind the coachman’s box, crowded up between it and the curvature of the coach itself in a very complicated and mysterious manner. ”

“ Tell the coachman to twist a rope for himself.
Sheamus. Oh! murder! he can't. There's that much vigour, and fire, and activity, and courage in the horses, that my poor coachman must take them by the heads; it's on the pinch of his life he's able to control them; he's afraid of his soul they'll go from him of a rout. They are neighing like anything; you never saw the like of them for wild horses.
Hanrahan. Are there no other people in the coach that will make a rope, if the coachman has to be at the horses' heads? Leave that, and let us dance. ”

“ Another writer in 1673 opposes stages. “Is it,” he asks, “for a man’s health to be laid fast in foul ways, and forced to wade up to the knees in mire; and afterwards sit in the cold till fresh teams of horses can be procured to drag the coach out of the foul ways? Is it for his health to travel in rotten coaches, and have their tackle, or perch, or axle-tree broken, and then to wait half the day before making good their stage?”
This gives us some idea of the badness of the roads, and the imperfection of the vehicles. ”

“ I've just got off the top of the Liverpool coach, and, I can assure you, it's very cold riding outside a coach all day long—however, I always say that it's better than being inside, though, indeed, it's very little that I trouble coaches at all in the course of the year—generally travel in my own carriage, only my family have it with them in Bristol now, where I'm going to join them; but I'm well used to the elements, hunting, shooting, and fishing, as I do constantly. ”

“ The waterman darts from the pump, seizes the horses by their respective bridles, and drags them, and the coach too, round to the house, shouting all the time for the coachman at the very top, or rather very bottom of his voice, for it is a deep bass growl. A response is heard from the tap-room; the coachman, in his wooden-soled shoes, makes the street echo again as he runs across it; and then there is such a struggling, and backing, and grating of the kennel, to get the coach-door opposite the house-door, that the children are in perfect ecstasies of delight. ”

“ Of all men in the world your coach cad has the quickest eye for detecting a stranger; and who but Sam Spring, the box-book keeper of Drury Lane, whose eternal bow has grown proverbial, could ask an impudent question with more politeness than Mr. Court, the chargé de affaires in the High Street, for the conflicting interests of half a hundred coach proprietors 1 "Do you travel to-day, sir?—Very happy to send for your luggage—Go by the early coach, sir?—Our porter [248] shall call you up, only let me put you down at our office." ”

“ A glorious afternoon in spring, a perfect playground, complete equipment in readiness, two score of eager youth in need of the health and recreation that come from sport pursued in the fine spirit of sport. Could anything keep them from playing? Nothing but the spirit of modern American intercollegiate athletics and the embodiment of that spirit, the paid coach, who knows that there is but one crime that he can commit—that of losing a contest. ”

“ The coach was one of the vehicles of the new fashion—the fashion of public conveyances driven, for the entertainment of themselves and of the public, by gentlemen of leisure. On the Derby day all the coaches that start from the classic headquarters—the "White Horse," in Piccadilly—and stretch away from London toward a dozen different and well-selected goals, had been dedicated to the Epsom road. The body of the vehicle is empty, as no one thinks of occupying any but one of the thirteen places on the top. ”

“ Then eight of us know the muffin man who lives in Drury Lane.
[Pg 33]
Family Coach.
In "Family Coach" each player takes the name of a part of a coach, as the axle, the door, the box, the reins, the whip, the wheels, the horn; or of some one connected with it, as the driver, the guard, the ostlers, the landlord, the bad-tempered passenger, the cheerful passenger, the passenger who made puns, the old lady with the bundle, and the horses—wheelers and leaders. One player then tells a story about the coach, bringing in as many of these people and things as he can, and as often. ”

“ Keep your head in the coach, it's all right, depend on 't. We always spring 'em over this stage.” Persuasion is useless; for the horses increase their speed and the worthy old gentleman looks out. But what does he see? Death and destruction before his eyes? No: to his surprise he finds the coachman firm at his post, and in the act of taking a pinch of snuff from the gentleman who sits beside him on the bench, his horses going at the rate of a mile in three minutes at the time. “But suppose anything should break, or a linchpin should give way and let a wheel loose?” ”

“ As the little swinging door closed behind him Joel found himself in a seething mass of players, rubbers, and coaches, while a babel of voices, greetings, commands, laughter, and lament, confused him. It was a busy scene. The trainer and his assistants were working like mad. The doctor and the head coach were talking twenty to the second. Everybody was explaining everything, and the indefatigable coaches were hurrying from man to man, instructing, reminding, and scolding. ”