Stagecoach

“ For them stage-coaches will have become romances—a team of four bays as fabulous as Bucephalus or Black Bess. Ah, how their coats shone, as the stable-men pulled their clothes off, and away they went—ah, how their tails shook, as with smoking sides at the stage's end they demurely walked away into the inn-yard. Alas! we shall never hear the horn sing at midnight, or see the pike-gates fly open any more. Whither, however, is the light four-inside Trafalgar coach carrying us? Let us be set down at Queen's Crawley without farther divagation, and see how Miss Rebecca Sharp speeds there. ”

“ You cannot live here; you are changed so much that we feel sorry for you. But do not go in your carriage: go in the stage-coach; it is much safer." I thanked them with all my heart, and followed their good advice. I had three places reserved, as I still wanted to take my daughter, who was then five or six years old, but was unable to secure them until a fortnight later, because all who exiled themselves chose the stage-coach, like myself. At last came the long-expected day.
(p. 55) It was the 5th of October, and the King and Queen were conducted from Versailles to Paris surrounded by pikes. ”

“ On these boxes and within the coach swarmed the boys, pea-shooters in hand. A favorite target was the pike-keeper at the toll-gate, and those who left the coach first fared worst. Our boys have but a feeble imitation of these good times when they riot into a railway car together for a few hours of hurried travel to their city homes.
The stage-drivers were universally kind and careful of all children placed under their charge; even young children, boys and girls, were intrusted to their care. ”

“ In the stage coach we see a conspicuous example of this great error, and some of the drags more recently built are the worst. If the roads round London were not so good as they are, or if the roofs of drags were loaded with luggage, we should hear of more accidents to the summer amateur coaches than we do at present. Most of the weight of the stage coach or drag is upon the front wheel, which is much the lowest, and it is so far back under the body that if the horses gallop the coach begins to swing, and a very small obstruction is sufficient to upset the whole. ”

“ In describing the pleasures and pains, the delights and dangers, the virtues and vicissitudes of the travel of early days by stage-coach in America, I have chosen to employ largely the words and descriptions of contemporary travellers rather than any wording of my own, not only because any such description of mine would be simply a transcription of their facts, but because there is a sense of closeness of touch, a pleasant intimacy, and indeed a profound sympathy thereby established with those old travellers and modes of travel which cannot be obtained by modern wording ”

“ The stage-coach is a great and unpretending accommodation. It is a cheap substitute, notwithstanding all its eighteen-penny and two-and-sixpenny temptations, for keeping a carriage or a horse; and we really think, in spite of its gossiping, is no mean help to village liberality ”

“ 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. ”

“ One would feel a decided intimacy with a fellow-sufferer who had risen several mornings in succession with you, at daybreak, and ridden all night, cheek by jowl. Even fellow-travellers on short trips entered into conversation, and the characteristic inquisitiveness was shown. Ralph Waldo Emerson took great delight in this experience of his in stage-coach travel. A sharp-featured, keen-eyed, elderly Yankee woman rode in a Vermont coach opposite a woman deeply veiled and garbed in mourning attire, and the older woman thus entered into conversation: “Have you lost friends?” ”

“ I fancied our American coach-drivers as glorious likewise, though with a lesser refulgence; and I distinctly recall my disappointment at the reality of the first coachman of my first coach-ride from Charlestown, New Hampshire. A man, even on a day of Indian Summer, all in hide and fur: moth-eaten fur gloves, worn fur cap with vast ear-flaps and visor, and half-bare buffalo-hide coat, and out of all these ancient skins but one visible feature, a great, shining, bulbous nose. But even the paling days of stage-coaches were then long past ”

“ Rowlandson’s picture of a stage-coach in 1780 shows the same preference. Only one passenger is seen in the wickerwork appendage, while the roof, innocent of safeguards or seats, is covered with sprawling passengers who are content to take their chance of an involuntary flight, so that they escape the certain inconveniences of the “conveniency.”
“I observe,” says Moritz, “that they have here a curious way of riding, not in, but upon, a stage-coach. Persons to whom it is not convenient to pay a full price, instead of the inside, sit on the top of the coach, without any seats or even a rail. ”

“ The very term, stage-coach, suggests to our minds a spanking four-in-hand, in brass-mounted harness, attached to a gayly-decorated conveyance. We picture them dashing through a village under the crack of the coachman's whip. Away they go, rattling over the bridge, down the turnpike, and with a shrill blast of the guard's horn, they haul up at the wayside inn, where a fat and smiling landlord escorts the passengers in to a hot dinner. ”

“ Perhaps it might be owing to the pleasing serenity that reigned in my own mind, that I fancied I saw cheerfulness in every countenance throughout the journey. A stage-coach, however, carries animation always with it, and puts the world in motion as it whirls along. ”

“ Little enough, by the fact that people travel by the Thame coach, the Hitchin chaises, and the Crawley stage.”—Old Coaching Essay.
It was not until quite late in the coaching era that proprietors began generally to adopt the practice of naming their coaches. In early days there was little or no occasion to do so, for when there were only two or three coaches on the most frequented roads, no difficulty existed in distinguishing between them. One might be the old original stage; another, somewhat better built and more up-to-date, would be the “Machine” ”

“ In it he described the coach between Philadelphia and New York with some distinctness:—
“The vehicle, the American stage-coach, which is of like construction throughout the country, is calculated to hold twelve persons, who sit on benches placed across with their faces toward the horses. The front seat holds three, one of whom is the driver. As there are no doors at the sides, the passengers get in over the front wheels. The first get seats behind the rest, the most esteemed seat because you can rest your shaken frame against the back part of the wagon. Women are generally indulged with it ”

“ The final test of a gentleman in those days was his behaviour at a stage-coach dinner. It was, if you consider it, a very severe and unfair test, for it is allowed that politeness generally leaves starving people at an early stage; and the appetites that coach passengers brought with them into the dining-room of an inn were usually very keen. An acquaintance of Constable, the painter, could find no more striking climax to a list of his virtues than to declare that he was “a gentleman at a stage-coach dinner.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Shergold, who in the coaching era was proprietor of the “Castle Hotel,” Brighton, and had every reason to know what life on the road was like, declared, in a very readable pamphlet he wrote, that “a woman was a creature to be looked at, admired, courted, and beloved in a stage-coach”; but let the rash modern traveller presume to look admiringly at the lady occupant of a railway carriage, and it is not at all unlikely that she will be horribly frightened, and take the next opportunity of changing into another compartment. ”

“ At last, completely exhausted, you fall gradually into a refreshing sleep—your thoughts grow confused—the stage-coaches, which have been ‘going off’ before your eyes all night, become less and less distinct, until they go off altogether; one moment you are driving with all the skill and smartness of an experienced whip—the next you are exhibiting à la Ducrow on the off leader; anon you are closely muffled up, inside, and have just recognised in the person of the guard an old school-fellow whose funeral, even in your dream, you remember to have attended eighteen years ago. ”

“ Not only were stage-drivers respected by all persons in every community, but they had a high idea of their own dignity and of the importance of their calling. Little Jack Mendum, who drove the Salem [Pg 332] mail-coach, did not deem it an exaggeration of his position when he roared out angrily in answer to a hungry passenger who kept urging him to drive faster, “When I drive this coach I am the whole United States of America.”
One coachman who drove from Boston to Hartford was deeply tanned by summer suns and winter winds, and his mates spoke to each other of him as Black Ben. ”

“ Folk were easily amused in coaching days. One of the old stage-drivers tells the following incident of stage travel. He was driving from Dover, New Hampshire, to Haverhill, Massachusetts. During the spring months the roads were often in a bad condition, and six horses and sometimes ten were needed to draw the coach. In Epping, New Hampshire, was a particularly hard place, locally known as the “Soap mine.” Through this mine of mud the driver hoped to guide his coach and six. ”

“ Miner and others who remember the great days of stage-coach travel, I learn that our American drivers were a dignified and interesting class of men. Imposing in bearskin caps, in vast greatcoats, and with their teams covered with ivory rings, with fine horses and clean coaches, they and their surroundings were pleasant to the eyes. ”

“ You have not time to go back, there is no place open to go into, and you have, therefore, no resource but to go forward, which you do, feeling remarkably satisfied with yourself and everything about you. You arrive at the office, and look wistfully up the yard for the Birmingham Highflier, which,330 for aught you can see, may have flown away altogether, for no preparations appear to be on foot for the departure of any vehicle in the shape of a coach. ”

“ No more prosperous calling ever existed than that of landlord of an old-time stage-tavern; no greater symbol of good cheer could be afforded. Though a popular historical novel by one of our popular writers shows us the heroine in a year of the seventeenth century conveyed away from her New England home in a well-equipped stage-coach, there were no stage-coaches at that date in New England, nor were they overfrequent in Old England. ”

“ It cannot, in its remotest origin, go back beyond the first appearance of the stage-waggon, about 1590, when the peasantry of this kingdom began to obtain an occasional lift on the roads, and sat among the goods which it was the first business of those waggons to carry. The peasant, then, was the first coach-passenger, for while he was carried thus, everyone else, in all the estates of the realm, from King and Queen down to the middle classes, rode horseback, and it was not until 1657 and the establishment of the Chester Stage that the Coaching Age opened for the public in general. ”

“ The stage-coach was appointed to start at 2 A.M., but at the blank looks of the captain, the stage agent said, “Well, if it is [Pg 364] so disagreeable to the ladies, suppose we make it five?” The fare was five dollars. It took seventeen hours to travel the sixty-six miles, and the coach stopped at ten taverns on the way. At each his fellow-passengers all got out and took a mint julep; perhaps he did likewise, which might account for the fact that he pronounced the trip a pleasant one, though it rained; “your feet get wet; your clothes become plastered with mud from the wheel ”

“ In securing a seat by post-coach, the traveller, in view of the limited accommodation, mathematically reduced his chances of meeting and journeying with vulgar and objectionable characters; while the higher fare tended to produce the same effect by eliminating all but those who were rich enough to afford the cost, and were therefore, by an easily understood process of reasoning, likely to be cleanly and well-mannered. How highly objectionable the company in a stage-coach might and could be we have the testimony of many travellers to tell, from Dean Swift to John Wesley and Macready, the actor. ”

“ Dalton Winter Stage.
This latter account is certainly a hard blow to the lover of the “good old times.” Of tough fibre and of vast powers of endurance, both mental and physical, must have been our grandfathers who dared to travel overland in winter time. Coaches were often “snowed up” and had to be deserted by the passengers, who were rescued in old pods and pungs, such as are shown on pages 316 and 318, and the journey had to be continued in some of the awkward coach-bodies or “boobies” set on runners like those on pages 362 and 364. ”

“ It should be added, in truth, that accidents on stage-coaches were seldom with fatal results. Stage-coach travel was more disagreeable than deadly. A stage-coach driver who had driven three hundred days a year for thirty-five years, could boast that there had never been a serious accident while he was driving, and scarcely any injury had been received by any passenger. ”