Coachman

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ He flung his cloak hastily from his shoulders and shouted to his coachman in an unnatural voice, "Home at full speed!" The coachman, hearing the tone which is generally employed at critical moments, and even accompanied by something much more tangible, drew his head down between his shoulders in case of an emergency, flourished his whip, and flew on like an arrow. In a little more than six minutes the prominent personage was at the entrance of his own house. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Weller are all right behind, and the coachman is all right in front, and the old gentleman inside, who has kept the window down full two inches all this time, has pulled it up again, and the cloths are off, and they are all ready for starting, except the ‘two stout gentlemen,’ whom the coachman inquires after with some impatience. Hereupon the coachman, and the guard, and Sam Weller, and Mr. Winkle, and Mr. Snodgrass, and all the hostlers, and every one of the idlers, who are more in number than all the others put together, shout for the missing gentlemen as loud as they can bawl. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I went there with an old coachman of my mother’s and a lackey to put my people off the scent. There was a little moonlight. Maisons in a small carriage awaited me. We soon met. He mounted into my coach. I never could comprehend the mystery of this meeting. There was nothing on his part but advances, compliments, protestations, allusions to the former interview of our fathers; only such things, in fact, as a man of cleverness and breeding says when he wishes to form a close intimacy with any one. ”

“ About the door the usual idlers are assembled.—A coachman out of place, a beggar out at the elbows, a sergeant in uniform, and three recruits with ribbons in their hats; a captain with his boots cut for corns, the coachman that is to drive to Dover, a youth in a straw hat and a rowing shirt, the little inquisitive old man of the place—who sees all the midday coaches change horses, speculates on the passengers and sees who the parcels are for—and, though last but not least, Mr. Bangup, the "varmint" man, the height of whose ambition is to be taken for a coachman. ”

“ A good coachman shows his proficiency as well by the manner of his getting up on the [Pg 27] bench as by the necessary preliminaries to make a comfortable start after he is seated. A lady, who must have been a close observer, once remarked to me that a certain gentleman, who was a mutual acquaintance, must be a very careful coachman, for, when riding upon the box-seat with him, he constantly asked her to hold the whip for him, while he went through a process of what appeared to her like “plaiting the reins.” ”

“ 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." ”

“ For to add to the difficulties of his task, his coachman, indifferent to the counsel that the more haste often signifies the worse speed, turning a corner too sharply, ran his forewheel against a post, and upset coach, actor, dresser, candles, costumes, and all. ”

“ A lady might as well hire a footman with insufficient calves, as a coachman who weighs less than two hundred and ten. That is the minimum. Besides, I don’t observe any wigs upon the coachmen. Now, if a lady sets up her carriage with the family crest and fine liveries, why, I should like to know, is the wig of the coachman omitted, and his cocked hat also? It is a kind of shabby, half-ashamed way of doing things—a garbled glory. The cock-hatted, knee-breeched, paste-buckled, horse-hair-wigged coachman, one of the institutions of the aristocracy. ”

“ The passenger booked by this history, was on the coach-step, getting in; the two other passengers were close behind him, and about to follow. He remained on the step, half in the coach and half out of; they remained in the road below him. They all looked from the coachman to the guard, and from the guard to the coachman, and listened. The coachman looked back and the guard looked back, and even the emphatic leader pricked up his ears and looked back, without contradicting. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The stage-coachman likes the boys on the road, because he knows they admire him. The hackney-coachman knows that they cannot admire him, and that they can get up behind his coach, which makes him very savage. ”

“ The business of the Under Coachman, is precisely the same as that of the Head Coachman, as before detailed. He attends with the assistance of the helper, to the care and dressing of his horses, washing and cleaning the harness and the coach, which is always the second best, and is driven by him at night; whereas the best coach and the best horses, are driven by the Head Coachman by day. ”

“ What is it made of but the discovery by each of us that we are at the best but a rather ridiculous fifth wheel to the coach, after we have sat cracking our whip and believing that we are at least the coachman in person? ”

“ The private coachman varied in those days, as he has always done, according to the position of the master or mistress whom he served; and Mercier, writing at a later period, indicates a sufficient variety of cochers of this class. “You can clearly distinguish the coachman of a courtesan,” he says, “from that of a president; the coachman of a duke from that of a financier; but, at the exit from the theatre, would you like to know where such and such a vehicle is going? Listen to the order which the master gives to the lackey, or rather which the latter transmits to the coachman. ”

“ No man with a hard, heavy hand can ever make a good horseman or driver. Neither will a nervous man ever be safe on a [194] coach-box, for presence of mind and strong nerve are there very often called into action.
The air and manner of a coachman have been cleverly described by some periodical writers. Let us, say they, suppose the horses put to their coach, all ready for a start—the reins thrown across the off wheel-horse’s loins, with the ends hanging upon the middle terret of his pad, and the whip thrown across the backs of the wheelers.—The coachman makes his appearance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ His feet and legs, as in the case of the gentleman coachman, should be at such an angle in front of him that he has a perfectly easy balance and something to brace against in case he needs to exert extra power. On a lady's light Victoria, with nothing but the narrow foot-board in front of him, a coachman in this new-fangled position is not only a figure of fun, but he is also in grave danger of accident. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ He opened the coach-door himself without any ceremony, and was just slipping in, when the coachman, with as little ceremony, pulled him back. Our figure seemed perfectly angry at this repulse, and demanded gentleman’s satisfaction. “Lord, sir!” replied the coachman, “instead of proper luggage, by your bulk you seem loaded for a West India voyage. You are big enough, with all your papers, to crack twenty stage-coaches. Excuse me, indeed, sir, for you must not enter.”
The Bee
The more ornate class of prose is represented by the Rambler essays of Johnson and the writings of Gibbon and Burke. ”

“ 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?” ”

“ The coachman of the fastest and best days, which really lasted for a comparatively small number of years, was better educated, and was rarely slangy in his dress, which was well suited to his avocation, and, except in winter, would not generally attract attention. ”