Part 7

The line was intended to curve round the outer slope of Caseleigh hill instead of cutting through it; but the curve was condemned as dangerous on so steep a gradient. And the plans were altered, to the disadvantage of the scenery, and also of the shareholders, as the cuttings were very costly.

The old people here would often speak of London as though it stood upon a hill. And they could give a reason:--“Folk always tell of going _up_ to London.” When the railway came, it was perplexing. This portion of the line ascends about 400 feet in about six miles, with gradients of as much as 1 in 40. Yet up trains went down, and down trains up.

Lustleigh station once had a signal-post, though it now has none. Seeing both arms lowered for trains to come both ways, I felt a little uneasy, there being only a single line. But the station-master said:--“Well, there isn’t an engine up at Moreton; and, if a truck did run away, it wouldn’t stop because the signal was against it.” Trucks do sometimes run away, but have never yet done serious damage.

This line was laid with the old broad-gauge rails on longitudinal sleepers, and was converted into narrow-gauge in 1892 by bringing the off-side rails and sleepers in towards the near-side. It has all been re-laid now with the usual narrow-gauge rails and transverse sleepers, excepting a few sidings.

On the broad-gauge there were eight seats in a compartment, first class, the narrow-gauge having only six. And in the Great Western carriages there was often a partition with a sliding door, making a sub-compartment on each side, each with two seats facing forward and two facing back. Passengers’ luggage used to be carried on the roofs of the carriages, being strapped down securely and covered with tarpaulins. But this was not peculiar to the broad-gauge. I remember it on narrow-gauge lines as well, especially the Great Northern.

Some of the old broad-gauge engines were worth seeing. On the Bristol & Exeter line there were engines that had a pair of driving-wheels nine feet in diameter, and four pairs of carrying-wheels set on two bogies fore and aft. These engines were taken over by the Great Western on the amalgamation of the companies; but the Great Western, I believe, had no engines of its own with driving-wheels of more than eight feet, except the Hurricane, whose driving-wheels were ten feet in diameter. I used to hear it said that Brunel had driven the Hurricane himself, and made her run a hundred miles an hour; and these Bristol & Exeter engines certainly ran more than eighty. It was one of these that came to grief at Long Ashton on 27 July 1876. She turned right over, and threw up her driving-wheels to such a height that they cleared the train, and came down upon the line behind it.

Engines were given names, just because stage-coaches had them. The most suggestive names--Crawley and Saint Blazey--are really names of places; and generally the choice of names is feeble. The managers of foreign lines have more imagination. I once met Lars Porsenna at Clusium--Chiusi--on the train for Rome.

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A cousin of my father’s writes to him from Brighton, 28 April 1842:--“I was very glad to find from your note that you reached home safely, having escaped all the dangers of the railroad with its fearful tunnels. I think of returning [to London] by the good old stage coach, slow though it be: it is better to lose time than to run the risk of being crushed to pieces in those dark tunnels, where you have not even a chance of saving yourself by jumping out.”

There was an old gentleman near here, who was a reckless rider, and met with many accidents out hunting, yet could not bring himself to face the dangers of the railway. At last--in 1851, I think--he had to go to London on some urgent business, and then (to use his own words) he committed his soul to its Creator, and took a ticket by the train.

My grandfather did not travel in a train until 5 December 1846, and then he writes:--“I had not much inclination to go in it after reading of so many collisions and accidents, but now I think I could form a resolution to go anywhere in it; but I shall not do so, unless it is for special purposes.... I admit there is danger in all conveyances; but this, I think, with proper caution is by far the safest, and I shall in future (if ever I travel again) take about the middle carriage, for I see the hinder carriages are liable to be run into--therefore the danger is almost equal to that of the front, except the bursting of the engine.”

In a letter of 13 February 1852 he warns my father of another danger:--“I do hope you will leave the train at Exeter, when you come down, and not risk going on to Newton. The post is now arrived, near 3 o’clock: another landslip just as the mail train came up. This has been the fifth slip.” And really the dangers were considerable then. They were reduced, as years went on; but he never got quite reconciled to trains. When eighty years old and tired of life, he writes to my father, 8 June 1869:--“However glad I should be to receive my call, I would prefer home to a railway carriage.”

He writes on 27 April 1845 that Captain ***** has just returned from London. By some misunderstanding he was driven to the wrong station there, South Western not Great Western; and at that date the South Western ran only to Gosport and Southampton. It being dark, he did not notice this, and got into the train, and started off; and then “they told him he must take another train and cross over to the Great Western; but he said ‘the Devil take the train, I’ll have no more to do with it, but coach it.’ So he coached it all the way home, and did not arrive until Monday instead of Saturday.”

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Until the rail reached Newton, letters came by coach to Chudleigh. Writing to my father on 25 June 1843, my grandfather says:--“Our post is altered. There is a horse-post direct from Chudley to Moreton: the bag is merely dropt at the office locked: he takes no letters on the road. Now in future we shall be obliged to send to Bovey with and for letters.” They had hitherto sent out to Kelly Cross upon the Moreton road; but Bovey was two miles further off. Several people here gave sixpence a week each to an old woman for bringing their letters out from Bovey and taking letters back; and he writes on 12 July 1845:--“The postwoman calls as regularly on Sunday mornings as on other mornings.” But on 15 February 1852 he writes:--“We have now a government appointed letter-carrier here: so the old woman, greatly to her discomfort, is out of a berth.... This man delivers free, and carries free.... He delivers from Bovey town on to Wooly, Knowle, here, and on to Lustleigh town, and so far as Rudge: all others, Parsonage, Kelly, etc., to fetch their letters from Lustleigh town.”

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In the last years of coaching there were half-a-dozen daily services from London to Exeter and Plymouth, all serving different places on the way. Thus, one coach came down to Exeter by Shaftesbury and went on by Ashburton, while another came down by Dorchester and went on by Totnes. For coming here the best plan was to take a coach that passed through Chudleigh.

On 19 March 1841 my father started from Piccadilly in the Defiance coach at half past four, stopped at Andover for supper and at Ilminster for breakfast, and reached Exeter at half past ten. Allowing for stops, this meant travelling about ten miles an hour all the way, the distance being about 170 miles. He went on by coach to Chudleigh and drove from there, arriving here at half past one, twenty-one hours after leaving London. This was the last time that he came down all the way by road.

On 10 October 1842 he started from Paddington by the mail train at 8.55 p.m., reached Taunton at 2.55 a.m., and came on by the mail coach, stopping at Exeter from 6.15 to 7.0, and reaching Chudleigh at 8.0; and he was here soon after 9.0, “being only 12¼ hours from London to Wreyland.” Coming by the same train on 20 March 1845, he reached Exeter at 4.5 by rail instead of 6.15 by coach, and he was here soon after 7.0. On 8 August 1846 he came from Paddington to Exeter by the express train in only 4½ hours, 9.45 a.m. to 2.15 p.m. He came by rail as far as Teignmouth on 26 November 1846, and as far as Newton on 2 April 1847. But the line from Exeter to Newton did not much improve the journey, as it added twenty miles by rail, and saved only seven miles by road.

He notes on 7 October 1847:--“Went from Dawlish to Teignmouth by railway on the atmospheric plan, and to Newton by locomotive.” Brunel was the engineer of the line, and he had come round to the opinion that locomotives were wrong in principle--there was needless wear and tear and loss of power with engines dragging themselves along: the engine should be stationary, and the power transmitted. And he induced the company to build the line with stationary engines, which pumped the air out from a pipe between the metals, and thus drew the train along by suction. But the leakage was so great that the system was abandoned.

Coming down by the Defiance coach the fare from London to Exeter was £3 for a seat inside, and by some of the other coaches it was £3. 10_s._ 0_d._ When the railway had reached Taunton, the fare was £2. 18_s._ 0_d._ for first class on the train and inside on the coach. After it reached Exeter, the fare was £2. 4_s._ 6_d._, first class, and £2. 10_s._ 0_d._ by the express. It now is £1. 8_s._ 6_d._, first class by any train.

Writing to my father on 1 March 1840, my grandfather concludes:--“I have to request you do take an inside place in the coach. By no means go outside.” He had a notion that most people’s maladies could be traced to their travelling on the outside of a coach. He was himself a little deaf in one ear; and he always put this down to going across Salisbury Plain outside the coach on a freezing winter night.

In 1841 there was an innovation; and he writes to my father on 22 June:--“Moreton, they say, is all alive: there are three vehicles which they call Omnibusses. Wills goes from Exeter [through Moreton] to Plymouth, Waldron and Croot to Exeter and Newton.... All grades appear to go by this means, even the farmers go instead of horseback.”

My grandfather liked travelling in a leisurely way, “the time my own,” and had no patience with my father’s way of travelling about the world, “packing and unpacking, from steam carriage to steam vessel, all bustle and hurry,” as he puts it when writing him upon the subject on 19 August 1844. On going up the Rhine with him, he writes, 23 July 1855:--“Two days more on the journey would have avoided the unpleasant part of it.” But my father went his own way, and my mother kept to it after his decease. She went up the pyramids at Gizeh and Sakkarah, when she was sixty-three, and down a sulphur mine in Sicily, when she was sixty-six.

The foreign diligences were heavier and bigger than the English coaches, and did not travel so fast. On 9 October 1842 my father arrived at Boulogne by diligence from Paris, “having been only 21¾ hours on the journey--140 miles--whereas in 1839 I was 27 hours.” Going to Switzerland and Italy in September 1840, he went by steamer from London to Havre in 22 hours, and by diligence in 16 hours from Havre to Paris and 75 hours from Paris to Geneva. Then in 9 hours from Martigny to Brieg--“tolerably good travelling, altho’ for a coach that takes the mail the delays are shameful”--and in 11 hours across the Simplon from Brieg to Domodossola. This took me 10 hours in September 1899, which was the last time that I crossed the Alps by diligence. Since then I have been through the Simplon tunnel half-a-dozen times, going from Brieg to Domodossola in 50 minutes.

I crossed the Alps for the first time in August 1869, going by the Splügen. I was with my father, mother, brother and sister; and we engaged a Vetturino--a man who owned the carriage and horses that he drove. We came back by the St Gothard in a carriage with post-horses. In travelling with a Vetturino, one had to wait at various places, while his horses rested; but in posting one sometimes had to wait still longer for fresh horses. In September 1873 we came over the Arlberg in a carriage with post-horses--there is a railway-tunnel underneath it now--and one day we did only nineteen miles. When the postmaster was innkeeper as well, it was not his interest to speed the parting guest.

In driving across the Splügen, we started from Coire, and halted for the nights at Thusis, Chiavenna and Varenna. There was rail to Thusis, and on from Chiavenna, when I came that way again; and diligences went from Thusis to Chiavenna in about ten hours.

Posting across the St Gothard, we started from Como, stayed a night at Lugano and another at Airolo, and took the steamer at Fluelen for Lucerne. The tunnel had not been begun then. It was finished in 1882; and I came through it for the first time in October 1883, reaching Lucerne in about seven hours from Como.

Coming through by railway, one misses some of the excitements of the older style of travelling. When we went over in 1869, the diligence had been attacked by brigands the night before in the narrow gorge below Airolo. It was twilight when we reached the gorge; and suddenly we heard men galloping towards us. My sister made up her mind at once that they were brigands; but they turned out to be an escort coming down to see us through, and they rode on with us, their carbines in their hands.

We came from Basle to London in 1869 in six-and-twenty hours, and in 1913 I came in fourteen hours. There were neither dining-cars nor sleeping-cars in 1869, nor were there any corridor-carriages, but only the old style of carriage that jolted one abominably. Yet my father kept talking of the speed and comfort of the train, for he was thinking of the journey in the diligence. I got little sympathy from him, when I felt tired in a train; and I have little sympathy with people who complain of travelling now. In fact, I sometimes feel a little jealous of their seeing things so easily that I saw only with trouble and discomfort. They have railways and hotels all over Greece; and, when I went there first in 1880, there were no hotels except at Athens, and no railways except from Athens to Peiræus, a distance of about five miles.

But there was a pleasant way of travelling that is unknown to them. When I first went to Holland in 1872, we travelled along the canals in a Trekschuit, a light barge drawn by two or three horses, tandem, that went along the tow-path at a trot. The seats were put up high enough to clear the banks of the canal; and you saw the country comfortably, as you went gliding through. They have only motors now.

These barges were formerly in use in Belgium also; and I found these entries in one of the old diaries here:--“25 July 1833. Dunkirk. By barge to Bruges.... Changed barges at Furnes, the Belgian frontier.... Changed barges again at Nieuport.... 27 July 1833. Bruges. Embarked in a superb barge, called the Lion, and drawn by five horses. It had carried Napoleon.... Arrived at Ghent in the evening.”

A steamboat was nicer than a diligence; and that really was the reason why people were always going up the Rhine. It was much the easiest way of getting to Switzerland and Italy. Going by the Rhine in 1855, my father notes that it was the seventeenth time that he had gone that way, either up or down the stream. That time he had his father with him, and chafed a little at the leisurely movements of the previous generation. But he never wished for anything more rapid than the steamboat on the Rhine, whereas I have found it tedious, and gone up by the train.

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Looking at old diaries, I see that the cost of travelling on the Continent has varied very little in the last seventy or eighty years. There has been a decrease in the cost of transit; but this is counterbalanced by an increase in the charge for bedrooms. It used to be absurdly low; but the rooms were often very poor and sparsely furnished even at the best hotels. The charge for meals at table d’hôte remains about the same.

My own experience of foreign tables d’hôte now goes back fifty years, having begun at Paris, 15 September 1867, with a table d’hôte of four hundred people at the Louvre Hotel--then in the old building on the other side of the street. So far as I can judge, the meals used generally to be better than they are, and they certainly were more abundant. The decline had begun before my time. After dining at the table d’hôte at Meurice’s, my father notes in his diary, 3 September 1863:--“Not so good a dinner as they used to give there five-and-twenty years ago.” At the table d’hôte at Blinzler’s at Godesberg, 25 August 1852, the courses were:--“1, soup; 2, roast beef and potatoes; 3, mutton cutlets and vegetables; 4, fish and sauces; 5, ducks and salads; 6, hare and stewed fruits; 7, roast veal and salads; 8, shell-fish and puddings; 9, fruits, sweetmeats and cheese.”

Innkeepers have changed their policy. They used to make their profit on the table d’hôte, and they find they can do better now with people dining à la carte. In those days it literally was table d’hôte, mine host sitting at the head of the table, and being helped first to make quite sure that everything was good. I saw this done at the Cloche at Dijon so recently as 9 August 1912; but it was a long while since I had seen this anywhere else.

The queerest table d’hôte I ever saw, was at the Singe d’Or at Tournai, 26 March 1875. That was Good Friday; and it was a first-rate fish-dinner, lasting close upon three hours. There were eighty people there, mostly from the town, as there were few travellers about, and we were the only English. The citizens went steadily through the fifteen courses, and drank dozens of champagne, and then went home with a good conscience, feeling they had carried out the precepts of the Church in having a meatless day.

In ordering wine at small hotels my father had a rule, which I have followed with success:--Always order the wine of the country. You will get the wine of the country in any event, whatever you may have ordered; and, if you order it under its own name, you may get it unadulterated.

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In travelling in Italy in 1851, my father took a chimney-pot hat to wear in the large towns, and he writes home on 9 September that another must be brought down to meet him on his reaching London, as he had given this away on going to the mountains. “It had become such an incumbrance that I gave it away to-day to a poor old man at Ala: he had a crowd soon around to see him in his new covering, for which he was very grateful.” He no longer took a chimney-pot, when I began to go abroad with him--1867--but I have seen chimney-pots since then in most unlikely places. On 20 March 1882 I met an American near Jericho with chimney-pot and black frock-coat and everything to match: he said it was the best costume God ever made. On 28 December 1909 I met a Hindu on the cone of Mount Vesuvius; and he wore a chimney-pot and a very loud check suit.

Writing from Interlaken on 17 August 1849, my father says, “You would be amused at seeing what monkies the fashionable gentlemen do make of themselves in dress: perhaps one dressed like a mountaineer, or William Tell, will wear white kid gloves, or thin patent boots, or some other incongruity equally ridiculous.” People do things better now: even invalids are fully dressed for climbing.

Accidents in travelling were commoner then than now, and people took them more as matters of course. In an old diary here one page reads as follows, July 1850:--“17, Schaffhausen. 18, Zurich. 19, Lucerne. 20, do. 21, Escholzmatt. 22, Interlaken. 23, Lauterbrunnen, here I had the misfortune to fall over the Wengern Alp and break my leg, and was confined to my bed at this place 11 days, and then at Interlaken till Septr. 21. Expenses at hotels 730 francs, surgeon 330 do.--1060. 21, left Interlaken for Berne. 22, Berne. 23, Soleure. 24, Basle.” Writing to my father on 26 July “on my bed at Lauterbrunnen,” he takes it all quite calmly, just adding, “I shall have seen enough of snow and waterfalls.... How much more beautiful is the sweet vale of Lustleigh.”

Plenty of people went to Switzerland at the time when I first went--1869--far more than when my father went there thirty years before, but nothing like the crowds that go there now. They kept more to peaks and passes then; and they were always talking of Hannibal’s passage of the Alps. Junius was talked out: Tichborne and Dreyfus were yet to come; and Hannibal filled the gap. I used to hear them at home as well as there; and they all had their pet routes for Hannibal--Col d’Argentière, Mont Genèvre, Mont Cenis, Little Mont Cenis, Little St Bernard and Great St Bernard, and even Simplon and St Gothard. In 1871 I went looking for traces of the vinegar on the Great St Bernard. My father upheld the Cenis routes as the only passes from which you can look down upon the plains of Italy. I doubt if Hannibal did look down. I think he may have shown his men their line of march upon a map, just as Aristagoras used a map to show the Spartans their line of march 282 years earlier.

At that date (1869) people used still to go round Venice with Byrons, just as they go round with Ruskins now. It was Byron’s Venice that attracted them--the Venice of Marino Faliero and the Foscari, not the Venice of Carpaccio. As they could not conveniently Stand Upon The Bridge Of Sighs, they used to stand upon the Ponte della Paglia, and spout the famous lines at it from there. And they all went to see the Armenian Monastery, because it was a place where Byron stayed. Hardly anybody goes there now.

My father used always to take a Byron with him, when he went abroad, and he used to write things in the margin. Thus, his comment on The Castled Crag is “Drachenfels. 31 July 1839. Good description--very correct.” I believe it was the usual thing to annotate your Byron as if it were a guide-book.

From my father’s diary, Exeter, 23 October 1838:--“When did I dream that the Ada of Childe Harold would ever appear to me as an ordinary, unnoticed and unadorned woman. I am half vexed I should have seen her, and yet would not have it otherwise.... I recollect, when I first saw Brougham, and was standing opposite to him, I could not believe he was the extraordinary man I had been accustomed to hear so much about. But, now some years have passed away, my idea of him is very little lessened by his actual presence at that time. So may it turn out here. I hope it will: but, until it does, I shall read Byron with diminished satisfaction.”

After a tour in Italy, my father writes home from Ragatz in Switzerland, 16 September 1851:--“From Italy one dared not write about the Government, for the Austrians open the letters; but the Government is the most despotic tyranny I ever heard of: an Italian cannot get a passport, or leave the country; nor can any foreign paper reach him; nor is he allowed to talk politics.

“Venice was placarded whilst I was there with a Government proclamation, by way of warning to the people, that six persons had just been sentenced to the galleys (some for ten years, and one of the persons a lady) for daring to speak disrespectfully of the Government and the Emperor. The prisons are full of prisoners for talking politics: that by the Bridge of Sighs is crammed.

“An Englishman was sent out of Florence for saying he thought the Government was right in having sentinels in the theatres. The Chief of the Police told him that the Government tolerated no remarks upon its acts, approving them or otherwise.