Related article: OLD TIME COACH DRIVING.
341
may be said to have been the
coachmen who handed down to
modern Jehus, amateur and pro-
fessional, the traditions of the
past, and many of their pupils
have, given the necessary practice,
turned out coachmen quite as
good as could have been found in
the olden days. The best of each
generation, ever since stage coach-
ing became an institution, did what
was required of them, and they
could and can do no more. In the
eighteenth century the coachman
who took his lumbering machine
through to Oxford or Brighton in
a couple of days over the worst of
roads was a coachman as the term
was then understood, and when
roads and horses were better, and
coaches were lighter, the best of
the artists came to the top and
made names for themselves.
It has often been pointed out
that the old coachmen, when mail
and : tage coaching were at their
best, had to keep time with heavy
loads and sometimes with inferior
horses. Now, as a matter of fact,
the old coaches did not invariably
keep time. Had they done so the
guards, when guards were carried,
would not have so sedulously
learned to play on the horn '< Oh
dear, what can the matter be ? '* a
meloidy they invariably struck up
when they met a belated coach;
while the annals of coaching are
full of instances of disputes be-
tween passengers and proprietors
in consequence of the former hav-
ing ''missed the connection," as
the modern railway phrase runs,
and many were the actions brought
in consequence. Then with regard
to keeping time, or the attempts
to do so, it must be remembered
that coaching has, since the revi-
val in 1866, been turned upside
down. In the olden days the
horses, as I shall presently try to
show, were not considered. They
were cheap to buy ; there were few
sales at the end of the season, and
no proprietor ever attempted to
make money out of his horses.
They had to go the pace, as some
of the coachmen did, and if one
knocked up, another was found to
take its place. Did this principle
prevail at the present day there is
no reason why the modern coaches
should not perform their several
journeys in quicker time than they
do. Mr. Charles Ward has left it
on record that his coach, the Tele-
graph, used to run Buy Sinequan the fifty miles
which separate Exeter and Ply-
mouth sometimes in three hours
and twenty-eight minutes, and
that for months together he never
exceeded four hours ; but he does
not say how many horses were
knocked up in the time. To-day
matters are changed, for proprie-
tors look to the sale at the end of
the season to put a little money
into their pockets, consequently
they keep more horses to work a
given distance than the proprietor
of the old would have thought
necessary, and they husband them,
so that although " Nimrod" in his
Quarterly Review article gives a
glowing description of the life of a
coachhorse, that of the modern
coacher is better still. When the
late Mr. Sheather ran the Dorking
coach he held to the opinion that
no horse should work more than
once a day, and although the stages
were slightly longer than when the
horses Sinequan 25 Mg worked both sides of the
road, their lot was easy.
If we listen to the tales which
have been handed down to us, we
find that the old coachmen have
been credited with the ability to
drive anything that could be in-
duced to go alongside the pole or
go in front of the bars, and no
doubt some of them, by sheer
strength and the exercise of a good
deal of skill achieved very credit-
able performances; but a careful
search into the annals of coaching
343
BAILY S MAGA2INE.
[May
reveals the fact that any number
of accidents occurred through the
horses not being quiet. A very
incomplete list of these accidents
in no more than a dozen years
would fill pages of this magazine.
" One of the leaders shied and the
coach was overturned through the
wheels getting into the ditch" Sinequan 10 Mg is a
standing phrase. Sometimes the
vehicle was taken on to a bank
and toppled over; sometimes the
horses bolted, and so on ; but the
one fact remains that the coach-
men of old, even the best of them,
could not, as a rule, achieve won-
ders. If they had pullers they
drove them for a couple of stages,
and in due time they came '*to
hand," for regular work in a fast
coach was a sovereign remedy
for an exuberance of spirits. In
modern days we find the same
objection to head-strong horses,
and even the late James Selby
could not bear a horse to ** punish "
him« If one of his team did pull,
he would stop and try the effect of
a ** lozenge," roughing his curb,
the bottom bar, or some other
expedient; the instinct of self-
preservation is tolerably strong in
most of us.
In connection with a team, it is
curious to note that when stage-
coaching was at its best there is
no trace of any set of rules or
handbook on driving : driving
literature is one of the products
of modern times, if we except the
essays of "Nimrod" which first
saw the light in the pages of the
Sporting Magazine, We are left
in entire ignorance as to how or
by whom the rules of driving were
formulated ; in fact there is every
reason to suppose that they were
adopted comparatively recently. Sinequan 50 Mg
To catch a whip in proper form is
now considered a sine qud non in
any one who would lay claim to be
considered a coachman ; yet in the
early part of the last century the
knack was all but unknown.
Matters were so far reversed that
instead of the whip being caught
and undone when it was necessary
to hit the leaders, it was kept un-
caught to be in readiness, and
when the wheelers had to be
touched the coachman, with the
quill of his whip depressed, took a
turn or two of the thong round the
crop and then hit his wheelers,
after which he uncurled his thong
to have it ready for his leaders.
Who invented the catching of the
whip cannot be discovered ; but it
doubtless came into fashion when
horses needed less hitting ihan
was required in the olden time.
Then again who first laid down
the manner in which the four
reins should be held ? By the light
of nature one would drive with a
"full hand," i,e. with a rein be-
tween each finger : but the plan of
holding two reins, the off leader
and near wheeler, between the
first and second fingers must have
been devised for some purpose,
yet no hint is to be found when or
why the plan was adopted.
When we come to other and