which from God we had,-to plague his heart until we had unfolded the capacities of his spirit." THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH 1849 (Abridged) SECTION THE FIRST THE GLORY OF MOTION Some twenty or more years before I matriculated at Oxford, Mr. Palmer,' at that time of discord, yet all obedient as slaves to the supreme bâton of some great leader, terminate in a perfection of harmony like that of heart, brain, and lungs, in a healthy animal organisa5 tion. But, finally, that particular element in this whole combination which most impressed myself, and through which it is that to this hour Mr. Palmer's mail-coach system tyrannises over my dreams by terror and 10 terrific beauty, lay in the awful political mission which at that time it fulfilled. The mailcoach it was that distributed over the face of the land, like the opening of apocalyptic vials, the heart-shaking news of Trafalgar, of Sala the harvests that, in the grandeur of their reaping, redeemed the tears and blood in which they had been sown. Neither was the meanest peasant so much below the grandeur and the sorrow of the times as to confound battles such as these, which were gradually moulding the destinies of Christendom, with the vulgar conflicts of ordinary warfare, so often no more than gladiatorial trials of na M.P. for Bath, had accomplished two things, 15 manca, of Vittoria, of Waterloo. These were very hard to do on our little planet, the Earth, however cheap they may be held by eccentric people in comets-he had invented mailcoaches, and he had married the daughter of a duke. He was, therefore, just twice as great 20 a man as Galileo, who did certainly invent (or, which is the same thing, discover) the satellites of Jupiter, those very next things extant to mail-coaches in the two capital pretensions of speed and keeping time, but, on 25 tional prowess. The victories of England in the other hand, who did not marry the daughter of a duke. this stupendous contest rose of themselves as natural Te Deums to heaven; and it was felt by the thoughtful that such victories, at such a crisis of general prostration, were not more beneficial to ourselves than finally to France, our enemy, and to the nations of all western or central Europe, through whose pusillanimity it was that the French domination had prospered. . . . These mail-coaches, as organised by Mr, Palmer, are entitled to a circumstantial notice from myself, having had so large a share in 30 developing the anarchies of my subsequent dreams; an agency which they accomplished, 1st, through velocity, at that time unprecedented-for they first revealed the glory of motion; 2ndly, through grand effects for the 35 eye between lamp-light and the darkness upon solitary roads; 3rdly, through animal beauty and power so often displayed in the class of horses selected for this mail service; 4thly, through the conscious presence of a central 40 intellect, that, in the midst of vast distances of storms, of darkness, of danger-overruled all obstacles into one steady co-operation to a national result. For my own feeling, this postoffice service spoke as by some mighty or- 45 those turnpike gates; with what deferential chestra, where a thousand instruments, all disregarding each other, and so far in danger 1 John Palmer (1742-1818), a public-spirited citizen of Bath, observing "that the state-post was the slowest mode of conveyance in the country" and that it took 50 letters three days to pass between Bristol and London, while he could cover the distance in one day, aid before Pitt a plan for conveying the mail in govern ment coaches, which were to maintain a uniform speed of 8 to 10 miles an hour. After much discussion, in which Palmer was supported by Pitt, but opposed by the postal authorities, a service between Bristol and London was inaugurated, and Palmer himself despatched the first mail- 55 coach from Bristol, Aug. 2, 1784. By the autumn of 1785 mail-coaches were running to most of the important English cities and towns, and in the following year the service was extended to Edinburgh. Palmer was rewarded by Pitt with an appointment as comptroller-general of the Post Office. No dignity is perfect which does not at some point ally itself with the mysterious. The connection of the mail with the state and the executive government-a connection obvious, but yet not strictly defined-gave to the whole mail establishment an official grandeur which did us service on the roads, and invested us with seasonable terrors. Not the less impressive were those terrors, because their legal limits were imperfectly ascertained. Look at hurry, with what an obedient start, they fly open at our approach! Look at that long line of carts and carters ahead, audaciously usurping the very crest of the road. Ah! traitors, they do not hear us as yet; but as soon as the dreadful blast of our horn reaches them with proclamation of our approach, see with what frenzy of trepidation they fly to their horses' heads, and deprecate our wrath by the precipitation of their crane-neck quarterings.3 Treason they feel to be their crime; each individual 2 All battles in the Napoleonic wars. "Crossing the road from side to side so as to avoid ruts, etc. carter feels himself under the ban of confiscation and attainder; his blood is attainted through six generations; and nothing is wanting but the headsman and his axe, the block and the saw-dust, to close up the vista of his horrors. What! shall it be within benefit of clergy to delay the king's message on the high road?-to interrupt the great respirations, ebb and flood, systole and diastole," of the national intercourse?-to endanger the safety 10 I stretched to the uttermost its privilege of of fifty minutes for eleven miles, could the royal mail pretend to undertake the offices of sympathy and condolence? Could it be expected to provide tears for the accidents of 5 the road? If even it seemed to trample on humanity, it did so, I felt, in discharge of its own more peremptory duties. of tidings, running day and night between all Upholding the morality of the mail, à fortiori I upheld its rights; as a matter of duty imperial precedency, and astonished weak minds by the feudal powers which I hinted to be lurking constructively in the charters of this proud establishment. Once I remember being on the box of the Holyhead mail, between Shrewsbury and Oswestry, when a tawdry thing from Birmingham, some "Tallyho" or "Highflyer," all flaunting with green and gold, came up alongside of us. What a contrast to our royal simplicity of form and colour in this plebeian wretch! The single ornament on our dark ground of chocolate colour was the mighty shield of the imperial arms, but emblazoned in proportions as modest as a signetring bears to a seal of office. Even this was displayed only on a single panel, whispering, rather than proclaiming, our relations to the mighty state; whilst the beast from Birmingham, our green-and-gold friend from false, fleeting, perjured Brummagem, 10 had as much writing and painting on its sprawling flanks as would have puzzled a decipherer from the tombs of Luxor.11 For some time this Birmingham machine ran along by our side-a Sometimes after breakfast his majesty's 3c mail would become frisky; and in its difficult wheelings amongst the intricacies of early markets, it would upset an apple-cart, a cart loaded with eggs, &c. Huge was the affliction and dismay, awful was the smash. I, as far 35 piece of familiarity that already of itself seemed as possible, endeavoured in such a case to represent the conscience and moral sensibilities of the mail; and, when wildernesses of eggs were lying poached under our horses' hoofs, then would I stretch forth my hands in sorrow, 40 see," was his short answer. He was wide saying (in words too celebrated at that time, 4 Attainder, deprived the attainted of all the civil rights of a free citizen. He was "dead in the eyes of the law," and could neither inherit nor transmit property. 5 A technical phrase in Old English Law, signifying the exemption of the clergy from criminal proceedings in the King's courts. In physiology the alternate contraction and expansion of the heart by which the circulation of the blood is effected. A Court originally so called from the fact that its sessions were held quarterly. The administration of the highway laws was one of its functions. 8 At the battle of Marengo, June 14, 1800, the French General Desaix, by his timely arrival, saved Napoleon from defeat, but was himself killed. The story that Napoleon on hearing of his death said: "Ah, wherefore have we not time to weep over you!" is called by De Quincey a "theatrical fiction." to me sufficiently jacobinical. But all at once a movement of the horses announced a desperate intention of leaving us behind. "Do you see that?" I said to the coachman.-"I awake, yet he waited longer than seemed prudent; for the horses of our audacious opponent had a disagreeable air of freshness and power. But his motive was loyal; his wish was, that the Birmingham conceit should be full-blown before he froze it. When that seemed right, he unloosed, or, to speak by a stronger word, he sprang, his known resources: he slipped our royal horses like cheetahs, or huntingleopards, after the affrighted game. How they could retain such a reserve of fiery power after the work they had accomplished, seemed hard to explain. But on our side, besides the physical superiority, was a tower of moral strength, namely, the king's name, "which they upon the adverse faction wanted." Passing them without an effort, as it seemed, we threw them into the rear with so lengthening an interval between us, as proved in itself the bitterest mockery of their presumption; whilst our guard blew back a shattering blast of triumph, that was really too painfully full of derision. with Birmingham tinsel, with paste diamonds, and Roman pearls, 13 and then led off to instant execution." The Welshman doubted if that could be warranted by law. And when I 5 hinted at the 6th of Edward Longshanks, chap. 18,14 for regulating the precedency of coaches as being probably the statute relied on for the capital punishment of such offences, he replied drily, that "if thè attempt to pass 10 a mail really were treasonable, it was a pity that the 'Tallyho' appeared to have so imperfect an acquaintance with law." I mention this little incident for its connection with what followed. A Welsh rustic sitting behind me, asked if I had not felt my heart burn within me during the progress of the race? I said, with philosophic calmness, 15 No; because we were not racing with a mail, so that no glory could be gained. In fact, it was sufficiently mortifying that such a Birmingham thing should dare to challenge us. The Welshman replied, that he didn't see that; 20 for that a cat might look at a king, and a Brummagem coach might lawfully race the Holyhead mail. "Race us, if you like," I replied, "though even that has an air of sedition, but not beat us. This would have been treason; 25 for its own sake I am glad that the 'Tallyho' was disappointed." So dissatisfied did the Welshman seem with this opinion, that at last I was obliged to tell him a very fine story from one of our elder dramatists-viz., that 30 once, in some far oriental kingdom, when the sultan of all the land, with his princes, ladies, and chief omrahs, 12 were flying their falcons, a hawk suddenly flew at a majestic eagle; and in defiance of the eagle's natural advantages, 35 in contempt also of the eagle's traditional royalty, and before the whole assembled field of astonished spectators from Agra and Lahore, killed the eagle on the spot. Amazement seized the sultan at the unequal contest, and 40 burning admiration for its unparalleled result. He commanded that the hawk should be brought before him; he caressed the bird with enthusiasm; and he ordered that, for the commemoration of his matchless courage, a diadem 45 the first. But the intervening links that con of gold and rubies should be solemnly placed 12 A plural of the Arabic amir, a commander, a noble man, The modern modes of travelling cannot compare with the old mail-coach system in grandeur and power. They boast of more velocity, not, however, as a consciousness, but as a fact of our lifeless knowledge, resting upon alien evidence; as, for instance, because somebody says that we have gone fifty miles in the hour, though we are far from feeling it as a personal experience, or upon the evidence of a result, as that actually we find ourselves in York four hours after leaving London. Apart from such an assertion, or such a result, I myself am little aware of the pace. But, seated on the old mail-coach, we needed no evidence out of ourselves to indicate the velocity. On this system the word was, Non magna loquimur, as upon railways, but vivimus.15 Yes, "magna vivimus;" we do not make verbal ostentation of our grandeurs, we realise our grandeurs in act, and in the very experience of life. The vital experience of the glad animal sensibilities made doubts impossible on the question of our speed; we heard our speed, we saw it, we felt it as a thrilling; and this speed was not the product of blind insensate agencies, that had no sympathy to give, but was incarnated in the fiery eyeballs of the noblest amongst brutes, in his dilated nostril, spasmodic muscles, and thunder-beating hoofs. The sensibility of the horse, uttering itself in the maniac light of his eye, might be the last vibration of such a movement; the glory of Salamanca might be nected them, that spread the earthquake of battle into the eyeball of the horse, were the heart of man and its electric thrillings-kindling in the rapture of the fiery strife, and then propagating its own tumults by contagious shouts and gestures to the heart of his servant the horse. But now, on the new system of travelling, iron tubes and boilers have disconnected man's heart from the ministers of his locomotion. 13 i, e. imitation pearls. 14 A humorous invention of De Quincey's. The 6th of Edward Longshanks would be a statute passed in 1278. Coaches were not known in England until much later 15"We do not talk great things, we live them." Nile nor Trafalgar16 has power to raise an extra bubble in a steam-kettle. The galvanic cycle is broken up for ever; man's imperial nature no longer sends itself forward through the electric sensibility of the horse; the interagencies are gone in the mode of communication between the horse and his master, out of which grew so many aspects of sublimity under accidents of mists that hid, or sudden blazes that revealed, of mobs that agitated, or midnight soli- 10 for the rapid transmission of intelligence, tudes that awed. Tidings, fitted to convulse all nations, must henceforwards travel by culinary process; and the trumpet that once announced from afar the laurelled mail, heartshaking, when heard screaming on the wind, 15 and proclaiming itself through the darkness to every village or solitary house on its route, has now given way for ever to the potwallopings of the boiler. much more loudly must this proclamation have spoken in the audacity of having bearded the élite of their troops, and having beaten them in pitched battles! Five years of life it was 5 worth paying down for the privilege of an outside place on a mail-coach, when carrying down the first tidings of any such event. And it is to be noted that, from our insular situation, and the multitude of our frigates disposable rarely did an unauthorised rumour steal away a prelibation19 from the first aroma of the regular despatches. The government news was generally the earliest news. From eight p. m. to fifteen or twenty minutes later, imagine the mails assembled on parade in Lombard Street, 20 where, at that time, and not in St. Martin's-le-Grand, was seated the General Post-office. In what exact strength we length of each separate attelage, we filled the street, though a long one, and though we were drawn up in double file. On any night the spectacle was beautiful. The absolute perfection of all the appointments about the carriages and the harness, their strength, their brilliant cleanliness, their beautiful simplicitybut, more than all, the royal magnificence of the horses were what might first have fixed Thus have perished multiform openings for 20 mustered I do not remember; but, from the public expressions of interest, scenical yet natural, in great national tidings; for revelations of faces and groups that could not offer themselves amongst the fluctuating mobs of a railway station. The gatherings of gazers about 25 a laurelled mail had one centre, and acknowledged one sole interest. But the crowds attending at a railway station have as little unity as running water, and own as many centres as there are separate carriages in the train. . . . 30 the attention. Every carriage, on every morn GOING DOWN WITH VICTORY ing in the year, was taken down to an official inspector for examination-wheels, axles, linchpins, pole, glasses, lamps, were all critically probed and tested. Every part of every carriage had been cleaned, every horse had been groomed, with as much rigour as if they belonged to a private gentleman; and that part of the spectacle offered itself always. But the night before us is a night of victory; and, behold But the grandest chapter of our experience, within the whole mail coach service, was on those occasions when we went down from 35 London with the news of victory. A period of about ten years stretched from Trafalgar to Waterloo; the second and third years of which period (1806 and 1807) were comparatively sterile; but the other nine (from 1805 to 1815 40 to the ordinary display, what a heart-shaking all are addition!-horses, men, carriages, inclusively) furnished a long succession of victories; the least of which, in such a contest of Titans, had an inappreciable value of position-partly for its absolute interference with the plans of our enemy, but still more from its 45 as are within the privilege of the post-office, keeping alive through central Europe the sense wear the royal liveries of course; and as it is costume, and the elaborate arrangement of the laurels in their hats, dilate their hearts, by giving to them openly a personal connection with the great news, in which already they 16 Nelson destroyed the French fleet in the battle of the 55 have the general interest of patriotism. That Nile, fought in Aboukir Bay, Aug. 1, 1798. For Trafalgar see Southey's account, p. 548, supra. 17 The sound made as a pot in boiling. The design of the whole passage is to belittle the steam engine by comparing it to a tea-kettle. 18 Petty, trifling. great national sentiment surmounts and quells 19 Foretaste. 20 Near the Bank of England. The General Post Office in St. Martin le Grand, was built in 1825-29. evening, the sun, perhaps, only just at the point of setting, we are seen from every storey of every house. Heads of every age crowd to the windows-young and old understand 5 the language of our victorious symbols-and rolling volleys of sympathising cheers run along us, behind us, and before us. The beggar, rearing himself against the wall, forgets his lameness-real or assumed-thinks not of his all sense of ordinary distinctions. Those passengers who happen to be gentlemen are now hardly to be distinguished as such except by dress; for the usual reserve of their manner in speaking to the attendants has on this night melted away. One heart, one pride, one glory, connects every man by the transcendent bond of his national blood. The spectators, who are numerous beyond precedent, express their sympathy with these fervent 10 whining trade, but stands erect with bold feelings by continual hurrahs. Every moment are shouted aloud by the post-office servants, and summoned to draw up, the great ancestral names of cities known to history through a thou exulting smiles, as we pass him. The victory has healed him, and says, Be thou whole! Women and children, from garrets alike and cellars, through infinite London, look down sand years-Lincoln, Winchester, Portsmouth, 15 or look up with loving eyes upon our gay Gloucester, Oxford, Bristol, Manchester, York, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Perth, Stirling, Aberdeen-expressing the grandeur of the empire by the antiquity of its towns, and the grandeur of the mail establishment by 20 the diffusive radiation of its separate missions. Every moment you hear the thunder of lids locked down upon the mail-bags. That sound to each individual mail is the signal for drawing ribbons and our martial laurels: sometimes kiss their hands; sometimes hang out, as signals of affection, pocket-handkerchiefs, aprons, dusters, anything that, by catching the summer breezes, will express an aërial jubilation. On the London side of Barnet,22 to which we draw near within a few minutes after nine, observe that private carriage which is approaching us. The weather being so warm, off, which process is the finest part of the en- 25 the glasses are all down; and one may read, as tire spectacle. Then come the horses into play. on the stage of a theatre, everything that goes on within. It contains three ladies-one likely to be "mamma," and two of seventeen or eighteen, who are probably her daughters. What lovely animation, what beautiful, unpremeditated pantomime, explaining to us every syllable that passes in these ingenuous girls! By the sudden start and raising of the hands, on first discovering our laurelled equipage!-by the sudden movement and appeal to the elder lady from both of them-and by the heightened colour on their animated countenances, we can almost hear them saying, "See, see! Look at their laurels! Oh, mamma! there has been a great battle in Spain; and it has been a great victory." In a moment we are on the point of passing them. We passengers-I on the box, and the two on the roof behind me-raise our hats to the ladies; the The half-slumbering consciousness that, all night long, and all the next day-perhaps for even a longer period-many of these mails, like fire racing along a train of gunpowder, 40 will be kindling at every instant new successions of burning joy, has an obscure effect of multiplying the victory itself, by multiplying to the imagination into infinity the stages of its progressive diffusion. A fiery arrow seems 45 coachman makes his professional salute with to be let loose, which from that moment is destined to travel, without intermission, westwards for three hundred miles-northwards for six hundred; and the sympathy of our Lombard Street friends at parting is exalted a hundred- 50 of gesture; all smile on each side in a way fold by a sort of visionary sympathy with the yet slumbering sympathies which in so vast a succession we are going to awake. Liberated from the embarrassments of the City, and issuing into the broad uncrowded 55 avenues of the northern suburbs, we soon begin to enter upon our natural pace of ten miles an hour. In the broad light of the summer 21 In Spain, taken by Weilington in 1812. the whip; the guard even, though punctilious on the matter of his dignity as an officer under the crown, touches his hat. The ladies move to us, in return, with a winning graciousness that nobody could misunderstand, and that nothing short of a grand national sympathy could so instantaneously prompt. Will these ladies say that we are nothing to them? Oh, no; they will not say that. They cannot deny they do not deny that for this night they are our sisters; gentle or simple, scholar or illiterate servant, for twelve hours to come, 22 Eleven miles north of London. |