Part 5

Here, as side-shows away from the horses, are the boxing-booths, the swings, and the trumpet-tongued merry-go-rounds, roaring like Bulls of Bashan and glittering with Dutch metal and cheap mirrors like Haroun-al-Raschid’s palace just come out of pawn and much the worse for wear. Ladies clad in purple velvet dresses, and with a yard and a half of ostrich feather in their hats patronise these delights; and lunch oleaginously on the fried fish cooking on a stall near by (which by the way, you may scent a quarter of a mile off). For those with nicer tastes, an itinerant confectioner makes sweets on the spot. For those who are sportively inclined there are several methods of dissipating their money: by shooting at bottles; shying at cocoanuts (all warranted milky ones) or by guessing under which of three thimbles temporarily resides the elusive pea. The furtive and nervous young man who presides over this show is more than itinerant. Ghostlike, he flits from group to group, harangues them with a phenomenal glibness and swiftness: discloses the pea under the _other_ thimble; takes his gains, and so departs: the tail of his eye seeking, and hoping not to find, any one who may chance to be a detective. An ancient—a million times exposed—fraud, and still a very remunerative one!

For the rest, a very vulgar and disheartening show to those who preach culture to whom the cultured term “the masses.” How to leaven the lump in that direction when you find it obstinately set upon such gross things of earth as penny shows, including six-legged calves and realistic scenes of the latest murders? Sons of Belial, indeed, are those who find delight herein: and many are they who do so take their pleasure.

X

On the crest of the steep ascent we come to Barnet, crowning its “monticulus, or little hill,” as the county historian has it. With the town we have already made some acquaintance, in the pages of the “GREAT NORTH ROAD.”

It stands too well within the suburban radius of London for it to escape modern influences, and although, as Dickens said, in _Oliver Twist_, every other house was a tavern, inns are fewer nowadays and shops more numerous; and many of the surviving inns have been rebuilt. The original “Green Man,” a very much larger and altogether more important house than the existing one, is no more. Sir Robert Peel—the great Sir Robert, statesman and originator of “Peelers”—often stayed there from Saturday to Monday, and it was beneath its roof that Lord Palmerston received the news of his succession to the title. The “Mitre,” one of the most important of Barnet’s inns at the close of the seventeenth century, has wholly disappeared, and the little house of that name, at the London end of the town, does but stand on a very small portion of its site; the rest of the ground being occupied by a large and exceedingly hideous building belonging to a firm of grocers. The disappearance of the “Mitre” is the more to be regretted, because it was a house of historic importance, General Monk, on his march up to London in 1660, having rested there, while his army encamped about the town. The country was tired of the Commonwealth, and Monk at the head of 14,000 men, was master of the situation. No one knew his intentions. Appointed by Parliament, and yet with a commission from the King in his pocket, his advance from the north was the cause of the liveliest hopes and apprehensions to both sides. Accompanying him were two “Councellors of State and Abjurers of the King’s Family,” a worthy pair named Scot and Robinson, who were really acting as the spies of the Parliament. Staying with him at the “Mitre,” they secured a room adjoining his, and either found or made a hole in the wainscot, to see and hear anything that might pass. The imagination readily pictures them peeping through the chinks and the secretive Monk, probably well aware of their doings, smiling as he undressed and went to bed. How he marched to London and thence, declaring for Charles II., to Dover, belongs to other than local history.

The “Red Lion” remains the most prominent house. What has rightly been called a “ghastly story” is that told of it in coaching days. An officer and his daughter, on their way to London to attend a funeral, only succeeded after a great deal of trouble in obtaining accommodation here. On retiring to her room, the young lady chanced to turn the handle of a cupboard, when to her horror the door burst open and a corpse toppled out, almost felling her to the floor. The “accommodation” had been made by hastily removing the body from the bed and placing it where it would not have been found, except for that feminine mingled curiosity and precautionary sense which impels our womenkind to peer agitatedly under every bed, to leave no cupboard unexplored, and no drawer not scrutinised.

This Bluebeard kind of a story was long a current anecdote in the posting days, and implicitly believed. It is probably safe to assume that it did the business of the “Red Lion” enormous damage, and that those travellers who subsequently stayed there approached all cupboards with dread.

The “Red Lion” possessed a queer character in the person of its ostler, James Ripley, who in 1781 published a little book of _Select Letters on Various Subjects_. On the title-page he states that he was then, and had been “for thirty years past,” ostler, and in his dedication to “the Hon. Col. Blaithwate and the rest of the officers of the Royal Regiment of Horse Guards Blue,” after saying that this dedication is “a grateful acknowledgement for the generous treatment always received for his unmerited services in the stable,” proceeds to grovel in the most abject manner. “I shall always esteem it an honour,” says he, “to rub down your horses’ heels, so long as I am able to stoop to my feet.”

This remarkable person, if we may judge from the curious frontispiece to his _Select Letters_, appears to have doubled the parts of ostler at the “Red Lion” and Postmaster of Barnet; while he would also seem to have embarked in the newspaper trade, according to the little heaps of papers seen in the pigeonholes in the background, labelled “Whitehall Evening Post,” “Craftsman,” and “Gazetteer.” Here we perceive him, apparently inditing his _Letters_, a man with a decidedly Johnsonian cast of features, and clad in what looks more like a cast-off suit of an old Tower of London headsman than an ostler’s everyday clothes. He is evidently at a loss for a word, or is perhaps (and rightly) surprised at the gigantic size of his quill, plucked from an ostrich, at the very least of it. A sieve, a curry-comb, and other articles of stable equipment, lie beside him, or are more or less artistically displayed in the foreground. If it were not for the title, we might almost suppose this to be a representation of some notorious criminal writing his last dying speech and confession in the condemned hold of Newgate. The picture appears to have been drawn from several points of view at once, productive of results more curious than pleasing to professors of perspective drawing.

Mr. James Ripley’s letters range from scathing denunciations of postboys and advice to gentlemen how to treat such rascals, to the humane treatment of horses, the construction of stage waggons, and the villainous practice of writing more or less offensive remarks on window-panes. We are, in fact, after perusing his improving literature, led to the belief that he missed his vocation and ought to have been a clergyman of evangelistic views, instead of an ostler. But to let him speak for himself:—

“I can justly say that I am no mercenary writer, and that all my views are centred in reforming the vices, follies, and errors of this depraved age. At present I shall confine myself to those nimble-fingered Gentlemen who leave specimens of their wit or folly, in trying the goodness of their diamonds upon the glass windows of every place they visit, or lodge at; curiosity often draws the fair sex to the window in expectation of meeting with some innocent piece of wit, or quotation from some eminent author; but how cruel the disappointment when she finds some indecent allusion, or downright obscenity.”

Thus the ostler-moralist of the “Red Lion.” What added terrors the roads would have acquired for giddy travellers had there been others like him!

Among other inns is the “Old Salisbury,” familiarly known to cyclists of northern clubs as the “Old Sal.” It was originally a drovers’ and teamsters’ house, and called the “Royal Wagon.” Many years ago, when the grasping proprietors of the “Green Man” and the “Red Lion” charged 1_s._ 6_d._ a mile for posting, the Lord Salisbury of that day, being a frugal man, transferred his custom here and saved 3_d._ a mile. Pepper, the then landlord, at once changed his sign to its present style.

XI

The modern Holyhead Road, made in the Twenties is seen midway in Barnet, branching off to the left by what remains of the once-famous “Green Man.” Broad and well-engineered though it be, it has little of interest in the three miles between here and South Mimms; its sole features, indeed, being a fine view of Wrotham Park, to the right, and a glimpse of the gateway of Dyrham Park, on the left. It can scarce be said that that heavy stone entrance—a classic arch flanked by Tuscan columns—is beautiful, but it has an interest all its own, for it was originally the triumphal arch erected in 1660 in London Streets, to celebrate the “joyfull Restoracion” of Charles II.

Taking then, by preference, the old road, the way lies across Hadley Green, where, among the ragged fir-trees that are scattered on its western side, stand the remains of the old stocks. The stone obelisk, famous in all the country round about as “Hadley Highstone,” is presently seen ahead, at a parting of the ways. To the right hand goes the Great North Road: to the left the old road to Holyhead. “Eight miles to St. Albans” is the legend on the hither face of the monument, whose other inscription we halt to read:—

“Here was fought the Famous Battle between Edward the Fourth and the Earl of Warwick, April 14, Anno 1471, In which the Earl was defeated And Slain. Stick no Bills.”

Musing sadly on that unromantic injunction, modern, but deeply carved, like the rest of the inscription, in the stone, we prepare to depart, when one, who is probably the “oldest inhabitant,” approaches and volunteers the information that the obelisk was formerly some thirty-two yards forward, and opposite the inn called the “Two Brewers.” In 1842, it seems, it was removed to its present position.

Leaving this elevated plateau, which Hall, the old chronicler, treating of the Battle of Barnet, calls “a fair place for two armies to join together”—as though that were the chief use for a plain—the old road begins its three miles of fall and rise; down into pebbly dips and over hunchbacked little rustic bridges spanning wandering watercourses; up steep rises and swerving round sharp corners, alternately from left to right; by the forgotten hamlet of Kitt’s End, down Dancer’s Hill, and past the suggestively named Mimms Wash, where the old coachmen, when the waters were out in wintertime (as they generally were, at this plashy corner) usually drove into the ditch, which, concealed by the floods that already covered the road and rose to the axle-trees, held a dangerous depth of water.

This old road, in fact, and indeed the whole of the eight miles between Barnet and St. Albans, pulses with stirring incidents of the old coaching days. It was, for example, in 1820 that what was described as an “accident” to the Holyhead Mail took place a mile short of St. Albans. As a matter of plain fact, it was not so much an accident as the almost inevitable conclusion of a road race between the Holyhead and the Chester Mails. The coachmen had been driving furiously all the way from Highgate, and striving to pass one another. Through Barnet they clattered, and by some miracle avoiding a smash on the old road, came at last within sight of St. Albans, to where the Old Mile House still stands by the way. Here, with an inch or two to spare, the coachman of the Holyhead Mail took the off side and was coming past the Chester Mail, when the coachman pulled his horses across the road. In the collision that followed, both coaches were overturned, and one passenger, William Hunt by name, killed. At the inquest held at the “Peahen,” St. Albans, both coachmen were, very properly, found guilty of manslaughter, and were committed for trial at the next Hertford sessions, which did not open till six months later. During the whole of that period they were kept in irons at St. Albans. Eventually they received a further term of twelve months imprisonment each.

With happenings such as these, becoming more alarmingly frequent as the pace of coaches and the rivalry between them increased, travelling grew exceedingly dangerous, and Lord Erskine, when counsel for a person who had had the misfortune to be thrown off one of the coaches from the “Swan with Two Necks,” and to receive a broken arm, was not altogether unduly severe in his witty address to the jury:—

“Gentlemen of the jury,” he gravely began, “the plaintiff in this case is Mr. Beverley, a respectable merchant of Liverpool, and the defendant is Mr. Chaplin, proprietor of the ‘Swan with Two Necks,’ in Lad Lane,—a sign emblematical, I suppose, of the number of necks people ought to possess who ride in his vehicles.”

A further development of coaching dangers about 1820 was found in the growing mania of the young bloods of that day for driving honours. Every young man about town cherished an ambition to become an expert coachman, but unhappily they took their lessons, not on the box-seats of empty coaches, but laid inexperienced hands upon the reins of well-filled conveyances.

This driving ambition was a fine thing for the sportively inclined, but staid and elderly persons were apt to be greatly terrified by it. An “Old Traveller,” writing to the _Sporting Magazine_ in 1822, after having read the coaching articles by “Nimrod,” asks the Editor if he will have the goodness to request his distinguished contributor to inform the travelling public how they are to travel fifty miles by coach without having their necks broken, or their limbs shattered and amputated. “In my younger days,” says he, “when I was on the eve of setting out on a journey, my wife was in the habit of giving me her parting blessing, concluding with the words, ‘God bless you, my dear, I hope you will not be robbed.’ But it is now changed to, ‘God bless you, my dear, I hope you will not get your neck broke, and that you will bring all your legs safe home again.’ Now, Mr. Editor, this neck-breaking and leg-amputating is all because one daring rascal wishes to show that he is a better coachman than another daring rascal; or because one proprietor on the road is determined not to be outdone by another.

“Neither can I think, sir, that such writers as Mr. Nimrod mend the matter much. By a lively and technical description of these galloping coaches, he makes many a young man fancy himself a coachman, from which cause many an old man gets upset and hurt. For example: a friend of mine coming up to town a short time since by one of these galloping coaches, was upset and much injured. On going to sympathise with his misfortune, he informed me that the accident was occasioned by the leaders taking one road and the wheelers another; so between them both, over they went. ‘My God!’ said I, ‘what was the coachman about; was he asleep, or drunk?’ ‘Neither,’ replied my friend, ‘_he had nothing to do with it_; a young Oxonian was driving.’ Now, Mr. Editor, it is not at all improbable but that this Oxonian had been reading your magazine the night before, instead of his classics, and meant the next day to put his theory into practice, by which my friend, a very worthy man, the father of a large family, nearly lost his life.

“Whoever takes up a newspaper in these eventful times, it is even betting whether an accident by coach, or a suicide, first meets the eye. Now really, as the month of November is fast approaching, when, from foggy weather and dark nights, both these calamities are likely to increase, I merely suggest the propriety of any unfortunate gentleman, resolved on self-destruction, trying to avoid the disgrace attached to it, by first taking a few journeys by some of these Dreadnoughts, Highflyer, or Tally-ho coaches; as in all probability he may meet with as instant death as if he had let off one of Joe Manton’s pistols in his mouth, or severed his head from his body with one of Mr. Palmer’s best razors.”

It was all very well to complain of these sportsmen, but what about the professionals? How, for instance, would he have relished being at the mercy of a man like the driver of one of the Birmingham coaches on the home stretch between London and Redbourne who, on one occasion, full of port and claret, could just manage to keep his seat, and in this condition started for London?

When “the drink was a-dying in him, like,” and he felt more alive, he sprang his team at this dangerous part of the road known as Mimms Wash. Here he met the Manchester “Coburg” coming round a corner at a terrific pace. They met, with a resounding crash; the first coachman finding himself in the ditch and his leaders charging over it into the gates of a neighbouring park. The coach happily struck one of the posts and stopped dead. No one was killed and the worst that happened to the passengers was that one of them who had jumped off in alarm, sprained an ankle. He, very naturally, objected to complete the journey on the coach and had to be provided with a post-chaise at Barnet. Some of the other passengers went with him. Only one of the horses received any injury, and that was the off-leader of the “Coburg,” whose shoulder was smashed. This affair cost the tippling coachman £20, and he thought himself lucky (as indeed he was) that it was not worse. The same coachman, who by this time had reformed, met the “Coburg” on another occasion on this stretch of road. It was a moonlight night and the driver of the “Coburg” was on the wrong side in order to avoid some heaps of gravel thrown down in repairing the road. When he saw the other coach, the driver of the “Coburg” tried to cross over to his proper side, and in doing so, the heaped up gravel turned his coach over. The passengers were unhurt, and when they had righted the vehicle and found a baby who had been flung out of his mother’s arms off the roof into a field, they resumed their journey.

XII

One shudders to think what would become of railway directors and shareholders if the old Law of Deodand were still in existence. It was an ancient enactment, going back to the days of the Saxon kings, by which the object causing the death of a person was forfeited for the benefit of his representatives. At least, that was originally the humane intention of the law, which then really represented the etymology of its name, making it a God-given compensation. Sometimes the death-dealing object was valuable; occasionally it was practically valueless; just as might happen. But, like many another originally just and equitable thing, the Law of Deodand became perverted, and the inevitable Landowner found his account in it. It is difficult to follow the reasoning that, when the person killed left no representatives, made the offending object forfeit to the Lord of the Manor on whose land the accident might happen; but so it came about. Deodand became limited after a time, and instead of those interested receiving the full value of the thing causing death, a jury would sit to assess the damages due according to circumstances. Thus, when the Holyhead Mail ran over and killed a boy on the road near South Mimms, the deodand on the coach and horses was assessed by the coroner’s jury at one sovereign. Rightly considered, however, deodand should not in this case have been levied at all, for the accident was entirely due to a group of three boys, of whom the deceased was one, darting across the road under the horses’ heads to see how nearly they could come to the coach without being run over: a common feat with boys in those days, and one that ruined many a coachman’s nerves. In this case the boy was killed, and clearly by his own fault. Had the deodand not been limited, a curious legal point might have arisen, as it had done before, in the case of a man being killed by a horse and loaded waggon running over him; when, the value of the horse and waggon being claimed, the lawyers successfully raised the point that it was not the horse that killed the man but the waggon. In the result, the deodand was lessened by the value of the horse. This law was finally abolished before railways came into existence, or we might have seen locomotives and whole trains forfeited to relatives of the accidentally killed; or, failing these, to the Lord of the Manor in the particular spot where the accident happened.

A perhaps less sporting practice than that of permitting amateurs to handle the ribbons, but one certainly also less dangerous to the travelling public, was the wholly unauthorised and altogether illegitimate custom that began to obtain in later years of admitting a third person upon the box of the mails.

There was properly but one box seat beside the coachman, and this proud eminence was most ardently coveted by every man. In early coaching days it was attainable by an early appearance upon the scene and by tipping the yard porter; but when competition had rendered coach proprietors keener in their scent for fares, this pride of place was valued by them at a considerable advance upon the inglorious seats away from the bright effulgent genius who handled the ribbons, and diffused a strong odour of rum around “the bench.”

There was a heavy penalty—£50, it has been said—against admitting a third person upon the box, the reason of this tremendous regulation being that the driver, it was considered, could not have sufficient room for doing his work properly when encumbered with more than one passenger on the box.

This heavy penalty, or part of it, was recoverable by any informer, and the result was that the roads were infested by such gentry, not only on the look-out for a contravention of the rule, but practising all manner of dodges to inveigle a good-natured or greedy coachman into letting a third man get up for “just a few miles.”

But the game was so well known that such an application was apt to be answered by a coil of thong winding itself round the thighs of the applicant. There was one particularly active informer, Byers by name, who is referred to in the _Ingoldsby legends_ as “the accusing Byers, the Prince of Peripatetic Informers, and terror of Stage-coachmen, when such things were. Alack! alack!” says Barham, “the Railroads have ruined his ‘vested interest.’”

The interests, “vested” or not, of these informers, were large and varied. Mail and stage-coachmen, postboys, travellers with their tax-carts, and waggoners, all contributed to their income. Sometimes these lynx-eyed fellows would find a coach carrying more passengers than it was licensed for. The discrepancy could be seen at a glance, for all stage-coaches were bound to carry a conspicuous plate stating these particulars. Perhaps the guard would artfully hang a rug over it, and then the common informer, hanging about at the changing place, would lift it up and have a look; finding, after all, that the coach was only carrying its legal complement. Whereupon, the coachman and guard, who had been lying in wait for him, would duck him finely in the nearest horse-trough for his pains.