CHAPTER XVII.

SOME CHARACTERS.

There was a great character who drove out of Machynlleth at that time. His name was David Lloyd, and he worked the mail between that place and Dolgelly round by Towyn and the coast. When he came to a certain long fall of ground, he would put his team into a gallop, and then, taking a small twisted horn, which he slung in a strap over his shoulder, would blow almost without ceasing, especially when it was dusk, as was more or less the case during a considerable part of the year, and, as his right hand was fully occupied with the horn, if he wanted to take a pull at the reins he made use of his foot.

It was dark for the greater part of the year before he reached the end of the journey, and, as his sight was not very good at night, he would sometimes say to his box passenger, "If you please, sir, will you tell me what is coming towards us." Perhaps the passenger after looking, would say "A cart," to which David would reply, "Then I was get out of his way;" but if the answer was "A gig," or "A carriage," he would say, "Then he was get out of my way," and would keep straight on.

Dolgelly at that time contained a few boon companions, some of whom were rather given to practical joking. One morning there happened to be on the box seat one of these gentlemen, and when they had proceeded a few miles on the road, he pulled a pill-box out of his pocket and took some of the pills. Upon seeing this, David said to him, "If you please, sir, what have you got there?" He replied, "Only a few pills, which I find very beneficial after a hard night." "Well, indeed," says David, "I had a rather heavy night; was you please give me some of them?" "All right," says he, "hold out your hand," when he poured several pills into it; and upon David asking how many he was to take, he said, "Take them all," which he did; and the sequel was, that he drove his coach to Machynlleth, but another man brought it back in the evening.

For two summers, when I was driving the Aberystwith and Kington "Cambrian," I had Ben Haslam as guard, who was also something of a character, and quite one of the old coachmen. He had driven for many years out of London on different coaches, and, like a good many others, had followed the receding tide, and had got down to Herefordshire, where coaches lingered for several years, and then on to Wales, where, at that time, railways had not penetrated.

He was full of anecdotes connected with the road, and towards autumn, when the down loads were usually very light, I would sometimes get him to sit by me on the box that he might enliven the way with some of them.

He had one story which amused me, of the only really crusty coachman I ever heard of. They were, as a rule, very cheery, genial spirits, and, indeed, had not much cause to be otherwise. There were few pleasanter lives. They were generally made a great deal of, indeed, perhaps rather too much so at times, although, as a body, they bore their honours becomingly. Between the patronage they received from the gentlemen and the deference shown them by the horse-keepers and others, it is hardly to be wondered at if sometimes their heads were a little turned, and they became rather too big for their boots. There was a story told of one, who was rather cheeky, giving great offence to a parson, who was his box passenger, by saying that he was not going to drive the next day, but should send his curate. They were, however, not very unfrequently taken down a peg by a lick from the rough side of a crusty proprietor's tongue; but on the whole, they were, as Tony Weller said, "priviledged indiwiduals."

But to return to the crusty coachman. His name was Spooner, and he drove out of Oxford, and, though often causing trouble with the passengers by his want of urbanity, he was too valuable a servant to get rid of. As was not so very unusual with him, he had been lately called to account for some want of civility to a passenger, whereupon he announced his determination never to speak to one of them again, and he kept his word, till one day, a gentleman who was going to travel by his coach, asked him some question, but after repeating it several times and eliciting no reply, turned to the proprietor, who was in the office, saying, "Your coachman is so surly, he won't answer a single question I put to him." The proprietor asked him what he meant by not answering the gentleman, to which he replied, "If I do speak to him he will only complain, like that other fool did the other day."

On another occasion his whole coach was occupied by musicians, coming to play at a ball at Oxford, and, as he did not expect very good pay from them, he was not in the best of tempers. It happened that at the last change of horses before arriving at Oxford, a boy, who had been sent with a fresh horse, was returning by the coach, and, as every seat was occupied, he sat upon the footboard by the bandmaster's feet, and after they had gone a short distance, pulled a Jew's harp out of his pocket and began to play upon it. Upon this the bandmaster asked the boy to allow him to try what he could do with it, saying, "He could play a good many instruments, but had never tried a Jew's harp." The new instrument proved too much for him, whereupon old Spooner looked at him with scorn and contempt, and said, "You are a pretty sort of a man for a bandmaster, and cannot play a Jew's harp."

He also narrated how, when the Great Western Railway was opened over only certain lengths, and coaches were employed over the other ground, some of those were conveyed certain distances on trucks, and the coachmen travelled in their respective coaches. Of course they did not overflow with affection for their rivals, and the way they tried to annoy them was by getting out of their coaches and applying the breaks to the wheels of the trucks.

This reminds me of how very slow all those connected with coaches, as also those who took a warm interest in them, were to realize the fact that their occupation was fast leaving them, and that the railways would, before many years, have entirely superseded the old system of travelling.

We were not, however, the only people who were somewhat sceptical on the subject, though with us, no doubt, the wish was father to the thought; but the _Times_ newspaper, whilst admitting the financial success of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, warned investors against speculative imitation, saying, "Where there are good roads and convenient coaches, it would be a mistake to alter existing arrangements."

Every little failure of the railways raised our spirits and gave strength to the hope that they would fail, as all attempts to utilize steam upon ordinary roads had hitherto done. At first, they were unable to keep time in frosty weather, as the driving-wheels kept turning round and round on the same spot of the slippery rail.

In the beginning of January, in the year 1838, I was travelling down to Shrewsbury by the Holyhead mail. It was the first night of the long frost and snow-up of that winter, which continued for two months, and the roads were so much blocked up with snow, that for a few days the coachmen and guards held a sort of wake at Dunchurch. On the night I travelled down the frost set in exceedingly sharp, and the only up mail that kept time was the Holyhead, which had come by road the whole distance through North Wales. The other mails, whose bags had been brought to Birmingham by what was then called the Grand Junction Railway, were after time, as the trains could make but slow progress on the slippery rails. The coachman and I, two silly creatures as we were, made ourselves happy with the conviction that railways must always be a failure for fast work, and that the coaching business was not in such great danger after all. No doubt this opinion was entertained by a good many others, and led to losses, by inducing some coach proprietors to oppose the railways instead of coming to terms with them.

It was on this journey, if I recollect rightly, that I had my last experience of that conveyance, long since quite lost to sight, and now nearly so to memory, that perhaps I may be pardoned if I linger for a few moments to raise it, or its ghost, before the eyes of the present generation, especially as I have seen some not very accurate descriptions of them.

The old hackney coach, though frousty and damp, was generally roomy and easy, as it had nearly always commenced its career in gentlemen's service, and had consequently been built by one of the best coachmakers of the day, and so far was decidedly better than the modern "bounder." It carried about it a character of decayed respectability, not to say grandeur, and upon entering one of them it was not impossible for a gentleman to be greeted by his own quarterings upon the panel. They were as ramshackling looking things as could be imagined, with occasionally, wheels of different colours, and the horses and coachman, together with his clothes, seemed made to match.

But to return to coaches proper again: one called the "Dart" used to run between Oxford and London, driven by a coachman who was commonly known by the name of "Black Will;" and one fine morning the box seat was occupied by an Oxford Don, who thought he would enjoy the air on his journey. After they had gone a short distance he addressed our friend Black Will, saying, "Are you the coachman they call Black Will?" His answer was, "Blackguards call me Black Will, but gentlemen call me Mr. Walters." It is needless to say that this shut up the Don for the remainder of the journey.

Dick Dicas drove the "Cambrian" between Llangollen and Dolgelly for several years, and one day it so happened that among the outside passengers there was a ventriloquist. As they drove along the road a man was seen walking leisurely across a field in the direction of the coach, when the ventriloquist threw his voice so as to make it appear that he was calling to it to stop. Of course, Dick pulled up, thinking he had got another passenger; but as he did not quicken his pace, he began to get impatient, for he was not a Job under any circumstances, and called out to him to "Come on," and "Do you suppose I can wait here all day for you?" At last, as he approached nearer, he said, "What do you want with me?" when friend Dick answered, "Why, you called me to stop." "I did nothing of the sort," replied the man in the field. "I tell you you did," said Dick, waxing warmer. "Well, I'm not coming with you, anyhow," said the leisurely man; whereupon there was nothing left for Dick to do but to drive on, not in the best of tempers, as may be supposed. Whether he ever knew of the trick played upon him I do not remember to have heard, but if he did find it out in time, I suspect he made it hot for the ventriloquist.

At one time Cambridge could boast of a clever poet as a coachman. Tom Cross was his name, and he drove the Lynn coach from the "Golden Cross," Charing Cross. He wrote "The Conflagration of Rome," and "Paul before Nero," and some wags among the undergraduates said the idea was given him by the fat from the bacon he was frying in the garret igniting. But be that as it may, they were very clever compositions. I fancy it was this man who published the first book on coaching which has appeared in print.