The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens' London by Judith Flanders Page B
Authors: Judith Flanders
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connecting the name of the particular mail – “Liverpool for ever!” – with the name of the particular victory – “Badajoz for ever!” or “Salamanca for ever!”...all night long, and all the next day...many of these mails, like fire racing along a trail of gunpowder, will be kindling at every instant new successions of burning joy.’
As they passed through the towns and countryside, everyone who saw the coach understood the symbolism of the oak leaves and ribbons, while ‘rolling volleys of sympathising cheers run along us, behind us, and before us’. As private carriages approached the mails, passengers could see comprehension dawning: ‘See, see!’ the oncomers seemed to be saying, ‘Look at their laurels!’ The box-seat passenger on these victory runs was always supplied with a stack of the London papers, each one carefully folded so that the headline – ‘ GLORIOUS VICTORY ’ – was uppermost as he tossed a copy into each carriage as it passed in the opposite direction.
Not every run could be this thrilling, although even the regular stagecoaches had a glamour of their own. The drivers, unlike the drivers of the mails, were not in livery but usually wore white coats with, over them, great travelling cloaks, often with several capes attached. Tony Weller, the stagecoach driver in Pickwick Papers , wore ‘a crimson travelling shawl...over this he mounted a long waistcoat of broad pink striped pattern, and over that again a wide-skirted green coat, ornamented with large brass buttons...His legs were encased in knee-cord breeches and painted top boots and a copper-watch-chain...dangled from his capacious waistband.’ Unlike the mails, the stage was not legally compelled to travel as fast as ten miles an hour, although that was still the aim, and some even ‘push their speed to twelve miles’. (This was proudly contrasted to Dutch or French diligences, which were said – although possibly only by the British – to travel at less than half that rate.) The coaches were named to reflect their speed: the Quicksilver, the Comet, the Rocket, the Greyhound, Lightning, Express and Hirondelle all became commonplace. It was not just speed, but scheduling, and keeping to those schedules, that were the stages’ selling points. In the 1830s, a coachman on the Cambridge–London route kept a brass clock on his box to ensure that he did his daily hundred-mile round-trip in eleven hours precisely. On the highly competitive London–Brighton run, with two or three proprietors running twenty or so coaches between them every day, several owners promised to refund fares if the coaches were late.
The heavy-stage, or night-stage, was less expensive than the ordinary stage. The heavy was usually an older stage demoted to night duty, so it was also less comfortable, and it stopped more frequently. It was also used by locals outside London as a short-stagecoach, as well as carrying passengers to and from London at reduced fares. When Dickens took the heavy to Yorkshire he was a successful author, but not yet a rich one, and he had a growing family. In Martin Chuzzlewit , Pecksniff and his daughters travel to London by the heavy stage: either he is less prosperous than he suggests to the world, or he is miserly, making his daughters travel in some discomfort as, unlike Dickens, they made no overnight stops. The young David Copperfield, too, after his mother’s death, is sent away to school ‘not by themail, but by the heavy night-coach, which was called the Farmer’. (What a difference between a coach called the Farmer and one called the Flyer!)
As with the mails, crowds, especially boys, regularly gathered to watch the arrival and departure of the stages at the main coaching inns in London. Thomas Trollope, the brother of the novelist, remembered in his 1820s childhood going to the White Horse Cellars in Piccadilly (originally on the south side, where the Ritz Hotel now stands next to Green Park; later in the
As they passed through the towns and countryside, everyone who saw the coach understood the symbolism of the oak leaves and ribbons, while ‘rolling volleys of sympathising cheers run along us, behind us, and before us’. As private carriages approached the mails, passengers could see comprehension dawning: ‘See, see!’ the oncomers seemed to be saying, ‘Look at their laurels!’ The box-seat passenger on these victory runs was always supplied with a stack of the London papers, each one carefully folded so that the headline – ‘ GLORIOUS VICTORY ’ – was uppermost as he tossed a copy into each carriage as it passed in the opposite direction.
Not every run could be this thrilling, although even the regular stagecoaches had a glamour of their own. The drivers, unlike the drivers of the mails, were not in livery but usually wore white coats with, over them, great travelling cloaks, often with several capes attached. Tony Weller, the stagecoach driver in Pickwick Papers , wore ‘a crimson travelling shawl...over this he mounted a long waistcoat of broad pink striped pattern, and over that again a wide-skirted green coat, ornamented with large brass buttons...His legs were encased in knee-cord breeches and painted top boots and a copper-watch-chain...dangled from his capacious waistband.’ Unlike the mails, the stage was not legally compelled to travel as fast as ten miles an hour, although that was still the aim, and some even ‘push their speed to twelve miles’. (This was proudly contrasted to Dutch or French diligences, which were said – although possibly only by the British – to travel at less than half that rate.) The coaches were named to reflect their speed: the Quicksilver, the Comet, the Rocket, the Greyhound, Lightning, Express and Hirondelle all became commonplace. It was not just speed, but scheduling, and keeping to those schedules, that were the stages’ selling points. In the 1830s, a coachman on the Cambridge–London route kept a brass clock on his box to ensure that he did his daily hundred-mile round-trip in eleven hours precisely. On the highly competitive London–Brighton run, with two or three proprietors running twenty or so coaches between them every day, several owners promised to refund fares if the coaches were late.
The heavy-stage, or night-stage, was less expensive than the ordinary stage. The heavy was usually an older stage demoted to night duty, so it was also less comfortable, and it stopped more frequently. It was also used by locals outside London as a short-stagecoach, as well as carrying passengers to and from London at reduced fares. When Dickens took the heavy to Yorkshire he was a successful author, but not yet a rich one, and he had a growing family. In Martin Chuzzlewit , Pecksniff and his daughters travel to London by the heavy stage: either he is less prosperous than he suggests to the world, or he is miserly, making his daughters travel in some discomfort as, unlike Dickens, they made no overnight stops. The young David Copperfield, too, after his mother’s death, is sent away to school ‘not by themail, but by the heavy night-coach, which was called the Farmer’. (What a difference between a coach called the Farmer and one called the Flyer!)
As with the mails, crowds, especially boys, regularly gathered to watch the arrival and departure of the stages at the main coaching inns in London. Thomas Trollope, the brother of the novelist, remembered in his 1820s childhood going to the White Horse Cellars in Piccadilly (originally on the south side, where the Ritz Hotel now stands next to Green Park; later in the
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