Coachmaker

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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?” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Oftentimes I feared that the coach would go over altogether into the ditch, when I was thankful that there was not any one outside except the coachman and guard, who are in a manner born to it, to break their necks. ”

“ In short, they are half-way up it before a horse touches his collar; and we must take every advantage with such a fast coach as this, and one that loads so well, or we should never keep our time. We are now to a minute; in fact the country people no longer look at the sun when they want to set their clocks—they look only to the Comet. But, depend upon it, you are quite safe; we have nothing but first-rate artists on this coach.” “Artist! artist!” ”

“ 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. ”

“ On a trip by coach, it was possible to see something of the country and to fill one’s lungs with fresh air, instead of coal-smoke and sulphur—and so forth, ad infinitum!
THE COACHING AGE
The Augustan age of coaching,—by which I mean the period when George IV. was king,—was celebrated for the number of gentlemen-drivers who ran smart coaches upon the principal roads from London. Many of them mounted the box-seat for the sake of sport alone: others, who had run through their property and come to grief after the manner of the time, became drivers of necessity. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ A gentleman not wanting his coach for a time, but wishing it to be kept in perfect repair, and his team fed and exercised, to be kept sleek and strong, leaves it in his coachman's care. The coachman agrees to keep from decay, and to replace should one die, and at the end of the term, return the coach in perfect condition, no mar or wear, and the team sleek and strong from good care, feed and daily exercise. But the coachman discovers that in the daily exercise of the team he can carry a party of business men to and from their offices, and secure for himself a gain. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ A coach may often know much more than he can himself perform; he may be with his own muscles but a mediocre exponent of his art, and yet be towards the top of the tree as regards knowledge and power of instruction.
A coach, like his pupils, often becomes too ‘mechanical’; he sees some salient fault in his crew, he sets himself to eradicate [67] it, and meanwhile it is possible that he may overlook some other great fault which is gradually developing itself among one or more of the men. ”

“ In 1868 a coach was started to Brighton called the “Old Times,” [1] the property of a company composed of all the élite of the coaching talent of the day. It proved a great success, and became very popular; especially, it may be added, among its own shareholders, who, being all coachmen, in turn aspired to the box—those who could, as well as those who only fancied they could. The initiated will at once understand how fatal this was to the comfort of every fresh team which came under their lash. ”

“ Should it have been your fate to travel often, more majorum, on the box of a stage-coach, more than one coachman has probably told you a story, two miles long, about some mare so vicious and unmanageable that she had been rejected by every other coachman on the road, and that nobody but himself had ever been able to drive her, saying at the same [94] time, "She is now, as you see, Sir, as quiet as a lamb." You must not believe all this, although it may perhaps be very true that the mare kicks sometimes, and that the man is not a bad coachman. ”

“ The coachman spends his Sabbath hours in the pious occupation of cracking his whip at the little boys who are playing marbles on the side-walk, reading the Sunday papers, and saying hard words at the flies which make his horses shake their nettings off—while the genteel footman goes to sleep in the carriage, with his boots out of the window, and only arouses from his slumber in time to open the door for my lady, as she comes from her courtly devotions. ”

“ A coach horse, although he has apparently few opportunities of employing his intelligence to his own advantage, whose life is spent in the stable, except when taken to the forge, or to the horsepond, will evince to his employers, in spite of this monotony, some habits and tastes which, if he is indulged in them, will nearly double his value. For instance, every coach horse has [Pg 48] a favourite place in a team, and will go well and do well in that place ”

“ 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! ”

“ It is then that, with worldly wisdom, the first comer hastens to secure the best berth in the coach for himself, and to make the most convenient arrangement for his baggage before the arrival of his competitors. Our youth, who was gifted with little prudence, of any sort, and who was, moreover, by the absence of the coach, deprived of the power of availing himself of his priority of choice, amused himself, instead, by speculating upon the occupation and character of the personage who was now come to the coach office. ”

“ We think we see a hackney-coach moving out of its ordinary patience, and hear it say, "You there, who sit looking so scornfully at me out of your carriage, are yourself the thing you take me for. Your understanding is a hackney-coach. It is lumbering, rickety, and at a stand. When it moves it is drawn by things like itself. ”

“ Away goes the coach, and the mother holds her lovely lad aloft in her arms, and in silent wonder, listens to the fading horn, and watches the coach grow smaller and smaller, until it disappears entirely from the sight. ”

“ I to my coach-maker’s and there vexed to see nothing yet done to my coach at three in the afternoon, but I set it in doing and stood by it till eight at night and saw the painter varnish it, which is pretty to see how every doing it over do make it more and more yellow, and it dries as fast in the sun as it can be laid on almost, and most coaches are nowadays done so, and it is very pretty when laid on well and not too pale as some are, even to show the silver. ”

“ He stayed at our house about twenty minutes, during which time the passengers of the coach which he was to return with dined; those at least who were inclined for dinner, and could pay for it. He derived his sobriquet of “the bang-up coachman” partly from his being dressed in the extremity of coach dandyism, and partly from the peculiar insolence of his manner, and the unmerciful fashion in which he was in the habit of lashing on the poor horses committed to his charge. ”

“ And there is hard physical work, too. Of course it is a welcome change from the class-room work, or the lectures, to get out on the diamond, but it is work, none the less.
Then there are the coaches to put up with. I never was a coach, though I have played under them, and I suppose there is some virtue in the method they use—that of driving the men.
And when a lad has done his best, has stood up to the ball, and clouted at it for all he is worth, only to fan the yielding air, it is rather discouraging to hear the coach remark sarcastically:
“You’re not playing ping-pong, you know, Jones.” ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ The bearded coachman--a stout, patriarchal coachman with a broad fur collar--looked back, saw him, and snapped his whip at him, so sharply that the boy, frightened, let go the axle, and fell off into a puddle. A chubby child, at the carriage window, leaned far out to see him, and laughed, without any malice, loud and heartily, as all healthy children laugh at anything comical. ”

“ 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." ”