The Autography of a Stage-Coachman.
By Thomas Cross. In Three Volumes.
Hurst and Blackett
Even if there were no positive interest in the unvarnished story of a four-horse coachman who had been part of the old coaching system in its best days, and had felt the distress consequent on its decline, we could not refuse our good word to the Autobiography of Mr Thomas Cross.
It is an honest book, and the expression of an honest effort. With his old occupation gone, and sons and daughters to care for, Mr Cross, who is on his way towards his seventieth year, bethinks himself of the good-natured praise he has had on the road for ballads and rhymes that he has written, prints the kind note with which the Master of Trinity applied for extra copies of the Cambridge coach- man’s poem on the ‛Conflagration of Rome by Nero,’ and looks to his pen for help. Fortunately for him, he has chosen to write about what he best understands; and while we smile now and then at the partly uncultivated, partly old-fashioned finery of phrase; we feel that his is a faithful chronicle by one of the Last of the Stage-coachmen, that might be edited two thousand years hence, under the direction of a future Master of the Rolls, as a true picture of one bygone form of civilization.
Mr Cross begins pleasantly by telling us how, on observing one morning the date of the way bill of the broken down branch coach to which he was reduced, he said it was a day ‟remarkable for its being the natal day, or, more properly speaking, the anniversary of the birth of three celebrated men.” One was Lord Bacon, as to whom he says ‟Pulman qui meruit ferat” is a very good motto. The second was Lord Byron, and the third was Thomas Cross. Thomas Cross passed, as he tells us, from the village school to ‟a large school at Twyford, near Winchester, the same village in which Alexander Pope first received the rudiments of those classical acquirements that enabled him to astonish the world with the production of his immortal pen.” Here, doubtless, Thomas Cross became acquainted with those authors, Tacitus, ‟Seutonius,” and the writers on Ecclesiastical History, concerning whom, when he invoked the muse over burnt Rome, he "had but to refresh his memory,” before he astonished Cambridge. From Twyford he went to be taught at Petersfield, near that ‟little village, Buriton, where is now standing the house in which the historian Gibbon commenced his immortal work.”
The father of our coachman had by restless speculative industry risen from poverty to wealth, but the son upon leaving school was promptly sent to sea, and made in his Majesty's service a voyage to India and back, of which he gives us many pleasant recollections. But he came home, unfitted for the service by a liability to what were considered epileptic fits. He went, therefore, into a lawyer’s office, where, being left alone, he fell in a fit over the fire-place, and was seriously burnt. His father set up a wine trade for him in Portsmouth, but he fell among the bottles and was seriously cut. The wine trade was given up immediately, but soon after this time the disease was mastered and got rid of. There was no lack of money then, and the heyday of youth was enjoyed fully.
Among his speculations Mr Cross the elder had fallen upon the business of a large mail-coach proprietor, and the son's first misfortunes in life were with horses. He had taken a wife; he had taken a farm; he was rearing three costly thoroughbreds, one with a colt; and he had taken a contract at the Navy Office to supply to the Dockyards 140 horses at a certain sum per team of four. That was in the year 1816, when a shower fell on Midsummer-day, followed by rain, rain, rain till Michaelmas, and terrible loss in the farm. One of the thorough-breds staked him-self in jumping a paling; another broke a leg in leaping into the road at the sound of a postman’s horn; the third kicked over the stall-post in the stable, and was killed; and even the colt died, of inflammation. A new horse, bought for the Government teams, had virulent glanders, and no care could keep the infection from its desolating course throughout all the stables. To crown all the ruin, a consumptive wife, pressed upon by anxiety, died in that year, leaving the widower with two very little children to bear his misfortunes as he could. It was then that Thomas Cross became driver of one of his father’s coaches, on the Portsmouth Road. He horsed the coach himself from Portsmouth half-way to London, meeting the down coach at Mousehill, near Godalming, and changing drivers that each might return. The best of coaching days were then before him, the form of coaches and the character of drivers was improving rapidly, though spoilt in the opinion of some of the bad old school.
Many years after I left the place of my prosperity, while on my last stage, business or pleasure called me down to my native county, and on my return I got on the box of the Godalming coach. In the coachman I recognised a very old servant of my father’s. After expressing, not in the politest terms, his pleasure at seeing me again, he began conversing on the hardness of the times, comparing them with days of old.
‟Them was the times, when I drove the old Blue for your father out of Portsmouth. Why, I have got more money in one night than, I fancies, you does in six months.”
‟Why, how was that?” said I. ‟I always understood that sailors never gave anything to coachman or guard.”
‟Give anything? We didn't give ’em a chance.”
‟Why, how did you manage, then?”
‟We used to set ’em a-fighting in the rumble-tumble, when they’d be sure to drop something worth picking up. Some of ’em would carry their blunt in their hats; and one night there was a fellow had got ninety pounds, all notes, tied up in a roll; and old Bob Chandler was guard of the old Night-coach, and give me the office, when we pulled up together at the Hammer Ponds. Going over Rodborough Bob contrived to knock the fellow’s hat off, when I got down and picked it up; and on our arrival at London old Bob and I went snacks. There’s no such times as them now.”
Thomas Cross had, during the thirty years of his life spent reins in hand, experience enough of coach politics, of the tactics of oppositions, of races, oversets, collisions; of notable passengers and other things. Long known on the Portsmouth road, he drove for a short time on the Oxford road, and became celebrated afterwards upon the road through Cambridge, from London to Lynn, till he was at last himself driven by the railway off the London and Cambridge part of his line to the care of an unprosperous branch coach between Lynn and Cambridge.
Elliston, who knew him, chose to profess that Cross could write a play.
I was proceeding one evening at a pretty good pace through Highgate archway, the spot where I usually met the mails, six in number, coming out of London, when one of them hailed me to pull up, as he had done. I did so, and immediately the door of the Holyhead mail opened; a gentleman got out, and, coming towards me, placed one foot on my roller-bolt, his left hand holding by my box-iron. I instantly recognised my friend, R. W. Elliston, who hurriedly said, ‟Give me your hand; I have this day become the lessee of Drury Lane, signed and sealed not two hours ago; now, I look to you to help me all you can—so write me a play, and set about it as early as possible.” I could not restrain a smile, as he grasped my hand; though I wished him all the success he could desire in so gigantic an undertaking.
Afterwards our author really did produce a five act play, which was performed at Cambridge and Lynn under good patronage, with flattering success. He ventured even to offer a play to Mr Macready, when he had the management of Covent Garden. It was on an Easter Sunday, in St Alban’s Abbey Church, that the stage coachman saw for the first time his second wife.
It was not long after this that St Albans had a far greater attraction in an object pointed out to me by my friend in the Abbey Church, whither I had accompanied him to attend divine service—an observance, from my coach travelling on a Sunday, I had, to my shame be it spoken, almost discontinued, of which neglect some inward monitor now and then reminded me; and therefore did I readily accept my friend’s invitation, more particularly as it was Easter Sunday, and I had never seen the interior of that venerable pile.
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