Part 7

The rivals then commenced cutting one another’s throats by actually rendering the affair unprofitable, and paring down the fares by one third, trusting that those with the longest purse would be able to survive, and recoup themselves when the others had been driven off the road. Fifteen hundred pounds were lost in twelve months by the proprietors of the “Stag” and “Wonder” in this way; but they had the satisfaction of seeing the “Nimrod” off the road, and though the “Emerald” and “Hibernia” night coaches, extended for a time from Birmingham, loaded well from the rival yard, the famous “yellow belly,” as the “Wonder” was fondly called, went on, with fares raised again to 48_s._ inside and 30_s._ out, from the 30_s._ and £1 to which, in competition, they had fallen.

Thus did the “Wonder” maintain its pre-eminence in the little time left before the London and Birmingham Railway came, in 1838, to cut its journey short, and the Shrewsbury and Birmingham Railway, in 1849, to complete the work of sweeping _all_ the coaches off the road into the limbo of obsolete institutions. In its last few years the “Wonder” was accelerated by one hour on both up and down journeys, for, starting an hour later, it reached its destination at the same time as before. Indeed, at the very time when railway enterprise cut it off in mid-career, a further acceleration was contemplated. It was proposed to perform the journey in thirteen hours. To do this it would have been necessary to establish six-mile, instead of ten-mile stages, and to abandon all stopping for taking up intermediate passengers.

But in the last days of its entire journey the “Wonder” was made to do a remarkable thing. It left the “Bull and Mouth” at the moment when the train for Birmingham steamed out of Euston, and reached Birmingham twenty minutes earlier. That extraordinary feat was not repeated, and was only possible even then by reason of the rails being slippery with rain and the locomotive wheels losing grip, causing great delay. From 1839 the “Wonder” ran only between Shrewsbury and Birmingham, by way of Ironbridge and Madeley, and ended its career, as a two-horse coach, in 1842.

XXIII

If Shrewsbury was a place to and from which came and went many fast coaches, it certainly sent forth one coach that was phenomenally slow. The “Shrewsbury and Chester Highflyer,” at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was very much less of a flyer than might have been expected from its name.

Those two places are forty miles apart. The “Highflyer” set out from Shrewsbury at eight o’clock in the morning, and arrived at Chester, under favourable circumstances, at the same hour in the evening. This snail-like crawl of little over three miles an hour is so remarkable that it invites investigation, whereupon some extraordinary things are revealed. At Wrexham, for example, two hours were allowed for dinner, and if his passengers wanted to linger over another bottle, Billy Williams, the coachman, who had looked in at the coffee-room door to announce the starting, would affably say, “Don’t let me disturb you, gentlemen.”

“Billy Williams,” as he was to one class, “Mr. William Williams” to another, “Chester Billy” and “Shrewsbury Billy” to the rest, was—need it be said?—a Welshman, and if any one wished for a little extra time in which to see Wrexham Church and its tower—one of the “wonders of Wales”—his patriotic ardour could not withstand the application for a further halt. Then, when Ellesmere was reached, another long stop was made to sample the _cwrw da_, the famous ale of that place; and, in fact, stops anywhere and everywhere, so that the wonder was, not that the journey occupied twelve hours, but that it did not take twenty-four. It must, indeed, have required some sharp driving, between whiles, to perform the distance in a dozen hours, and it was probably during one of these spurts that another coachman—one Jem Robins—was killed by being crushed under the coach when on one occasion it was overturned at an abrupt corner.

Billy Williams, however, made a peaceful end. He retired, or _was_ retired by the railway’s usurpation of his line of country. He was what our grandfathers called an “original,” and a _protégé_ of the Honourable Thomas Kenyon, at Pradoe, to whom he gave an excellent reason why horses should seem to go better at night.

“Hang me, Billy!” the honourable had exclaimed, “I’ve tried to account for it, but never could.”

“Why, I’m surprised at you,” said Billy; “do you mean you don’t know that?” “Why, of course I don’t,” replied the squire. “Well, then,” said Billy, “if you want to know the _real_ reason, it’s because you’ve had your dinner.”

Billy was the hero of a story that long made a laughing-stock of him. The Honourable Thomas Kenyon was driving on one occasion to Chester races, but before setting out with his party from Pradoe thought that, as it was a particularly hot day, Billy might feel more comfortable if he exchanged his breeches and leather tops for lighter raiment. He accordingly told him to go upstairs and put on a pair of his own white trousers. Billy went up, and came back attired in a manner his host had never contemplated, for he had put the trousers on over the other garments!

Those days of fast coaches and slow coaches seem very remote from these railway times, when by a quick train you may reach Shrewsbury from London in three hours and thirty-five minutes, arriving, without turning a hair, at the castellated building that serves for a railway station, say, by the 2.10 p.m. train from Paddington, bringing you to the capital of the “proud Salopians” at 5.45, not too late for tea. Thus, between lunch and the afternoon cup you have accomplished what the “Wonder” at its best took fourteen hours and three-quarters to do. This forty-eight-miles-an-hour gait is, of course, not remarkable as railway travelling goes, but it would have sufficiently startled the old Shropshire squires, who thought they knew something of pace, aye, and went it themselves, in every sense.

Those were fine fellows, and their grand and beautiful old town of the Three Loggerheads still keeps an air—historic, racy, and individual—even in these levelling days. The memory of the hard-drinking, hard-swearing, and anything and everything but hard-working, Shropshire squires of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, who drank deep and left no heeltaps, “to friends all round the Wrekin,” will not readily fade. The heritages of their descendants—gout and encumbered estates—forbid the generous capacity of their forbears for old port and gambling to be forgot, and such things, however excellent they may be as vouchers for the fact that they lived their lives of old, are little desired by a generation that also desires to live and go the pace after its own ideals.

There remain in Shrewsbury many signs of this fine old free-handed way of living, when the town was not only the capital of the Marches of Wales, but resorted to for its “season” by the county families, who had their own town houses here, and came to them from their rural seats just as do their descendants to the London season. For another thing, the picturesque old town—seated so grandly within the girdle of the yellow Severn that enfolds it lovingly—is full of the queerest, quaintest inns that can be imagined; their strangely roomy and cavernous construction equalled only by their uniquely incongruous signs.

Much has already been said of the “Lion” inn, in connection with coaching, and let it now be more particularly treated, first of all with the remark that it was the foremost inn of its day. It was also the scene of some of Mytton’s mad exploits: that Jack Mytton, of Halston, who was a true pattern and faithful exemplar of the old-time Shropshire squire. They still show the window through which he leaped, for pure devilment, when he was being chaired, shoulder-high, by the enthusiastic burgesses on his return for Parliament in 1819. He sprang from the chair on that occasion, and alighted, amid a shower of broken glass, in the bar. No one was particularly surprised, for his was a freakish nature; but they _would_ have been astonished if he had walked in, in the usual way, by the door.

It was here, too, that the adventure of the foxes, narrated by “Nimrod,” occurred. Mytton, “on going into the bar of the ‘Lion Inn’ one evening when somewhat ‘sprung’ by wine, was told there was a box in the coach-office for him, which contained two brace of foxes. He requested it might be brought to him, when, taking up the poker, he knocked the lid off it, and let the foxes out in the room in which the landlady and some of her female friends were assembled—giving a thrilling view-halloa at the time. Now it cannot be said they ‘broke cover’ in good style; but it may safely be asserted that they broke such a great quantity of bottles, glasses, and crockery-ware as to have rendered the joke an expensive one.”

It will not be matter for surprise, after this, when it is said that Jack Mytton was absolutely the most fearless and dare-devil among the courageous, reckless spirits of his time. He was always ready to risk breaking his own neck, and that of any one else who might have the misfortune to be thrown into his company while driving; and the story told of him and his nervous friend in a gig together is perfectly true. The friend gently remonstrated with him on his wild driving. “We may be upset,” said he. “Were you ever much hurt, then, by being upset in a gig?” inquired Mytton. “No, thank God!” exclaimed the friend, “for I was never upset in one.” “What!” replied the squire, “never upset in a gig? What a d—d slow fellow you must be,” and, running his near wheel up the bank, over they both went.

XXIV

The “Lion” was the hotel to which De Quincey came in 1802, when, as a youth, he was setting forth in his unpractical way for London. He had walked in from Oswestry, reaching Shrewsbury two hours after nightfall. Innkeepers in those times knew little of pedestrians who footed it for pleasure, and classed all who walked when they might have rode as tramps. Therefore, it will be allowed that De Quincey timed his arrival well, at an hour when dusty feet are not so easily seen. However, had his shoes been noticed, he was ready with a defence, for he came to the “Lion” as a passenger already booked to London by the Mail. An Oswestry friend had performed that service for him, and here he was come to wait the arrival of that conveyance.

“This character,” he says, “at once installed me as rightfully a guest of the inn, however profligate a life I might have previously led as a pedestrian. Accordingly I was received with special courtesy, and it so happened with something even like pomp. Four wax-lights carried before me by obedient mutes, these were but ordinary honours, meant (as old experience had instructed me) for the first engineering step towards effecting a lodgment upon the stranger’s purse. In fact, the wax-lights are used by innkeepers, both abroad and at home, to ‘try the range of their guns.’ If the stranger submits quietly, as a good anti-pedestrian ought surely to do, and fires no counter-gun by way of protest, then he is recognised at once as passively within range, and amenable to orders. I have always looked upon this fine of 5_s._ or 7_s._ (for wax that you do not absolutely need) as a sort of inaugural _honorarium_ entrance-money, what in jails used to be known as _smart_ money, proclaiming me to be a man _comme il faut_, and no toll in this world of tolls do I pay so cheerfully. This, meantime, as I have said, was too customary a form to confer much distinction. The wax-lights, to use the magnificent Grecian phrase επομπ ευε, moved pompously before me, as the holy-holy fire (the inextinguishable fire and its golden hearth) moved before Cæsar _semper_ Augustus, when he made his official or ceremonial _avatars_. Yet still this moved along the ancient channels of glorification: it rolled along ancient grooves—I might say, indeed, like one of the twelve Cæsars when dying, _Ut puto, Deus fio_ (It’s my private opinion that at this very moment I am turning into a god), but still the metamorphosis was not complete. _That_ was accomplished when I stepped into the sumptuous room allotted to me. It was a ball-room of noble proportions—lighted, if I chose to issue orders, by three gorgeous chandeliers, not basely wrapped up in paper, but sparkling through all their thickets of crystal branches, and flashing back the soft rays of my tall waxen lights. There were, moreover, two orchestras, which money would have filled within thirty minutes. And, upon the whole, one thing only was wanting—viz., a throne, for the completion of my _apotheosis_.

“It might be seven p.m. when first I entered upon my kingdom. About three hours later I rose from my chair, and with considerable interest looked out into the night. For nearly two hours I had heard fierce winds arising; and the whole atmosphere had by this time become one vast laboratory of hostile movements in all directions. Such a chaos, such a distracting wilderness of dim sights, and of those awful “Sounds that live in darkness” (Wordsworth’s _Excursion_), never had I consciously witnessed.... Long before midnight the household (with the exception of a solitary waiter) had retired to rest. Two hours, at least, were left to me, after twelve o’clock had struck, for heart-shaking reflections, and the local circumstances around me deepened and intensified these reflections, impressed upon them solemnity and terror, sometimes even horror....

“The unusual dimensions of the rooms, especially their towering height, brought up continually and obstinately, through natural links of associated feelings or images, the mighty vision of London waiting me, afar off. An altitude of nineteen or twenty feet showed itself unavoidably upon an exaggerated scale in some of the smaller side-rooms—meant probably for cards or for refreshments. This single feature of the rooms——their unusual altitude, and the echoing hollowness which had become the exponent of that altitude—this one terrific feature (for terrific it was in its effect), together with the crowding and evanescent images of the flying feet that so often had spread gladness through these halls on the wings of youth and hope at seasons when every room rang with music—all this, rising in tumultuous vision, whilst the dead hours of the night were stealing along, all around me—household and town—sleeping, and whilst against the windows more and more the storm was raving, and to all appearance endlessly growing, threw me into the deadliest condition of nervous emotion under contradictory forces, high over which predominated horror recoiling from that unfathomed abyss in London into which I was now so wilfully precipitating myself.

“... Such thoughts, and visions without number corresponding to them, were moving across the _camera obscura_ of my fermenting fancy, when suddenly I heard a sound of wheels, which, however, soon died off into some remote quarter. I guessed at the truth, viz., that it was the Holyhead Mail,[3] wheeling off on its primary duty of delivering its bags at the post-office. In a few minutes it was announced as having changed horses; and I was off to London.”

Footnote 3:

_Not_ the Holyhead Mail. De Quincey is writing of 1802, when the Holyhead Mail, as already shown, went through Chester. He refers to the London, Birmingham, and Shrewsbury Mail, which, started in 1785, lasted until 1808. It was by this he travelled.

XXV

“All the mails in the kingdom,” he continues, “with one solitary exception (that of Liverpool), were so arranged as to reach London early in the morning. Between the hours of four and six a.m., one after the other, according to their station upon the roll, all the mails from the N[orth]—the E[ast]—the W[est]—the S[outh]—whence, according to some curious etymologists, comes the magical word NEWS—drove up successively to the post-office and rendered up their heart-shaking budgets; none earlier than four o’clock, none later than six. I am speaking of days when all things moved slowly. The condition of the roads was then such, that, in order to face it, a corresponding build of coaches, hyperbolically massive, was rendered necessary; the mails were, upon principle, made so strong as to be the heaviest of all carriages known to the wit or the experience of man; and from these joint evils of ponderous coaches and roads that were quagmires, it was impossible for even the picked breed of English coach-horses, all bone and blood, to carry forward their huge tonnage at a greater rate than six and a half miles an hour. Consequently, it cost eight-and-twenty massy[4] hours for us, leaving Shrewsbury at two o’clock in the dead of night, to reach the General Post-office, and faithfully to deposit upon the threshing-floors of Lombard Street all that weight of love and hatred which Ireland had found herself able to muster through twenty-four hours in the great depôt of Dublin, by way of donation to England.”

Footnote 4:

The “solid” hours, or the “mortal” hours, of modern colloquial speech.

No apology, it will be conceded, is necessary for having quoted De Quincey at this length, especially as these passages are omitted from many editions, and so are little known. The eloquence that thus gives expression to the morbid imagination of this forerunner of modern neurotics is well employed here, and so largely has mind usurped dominion over matter in later years that few of the present generation will altogether fail to sympathise with his nocturnal terrors.

The circumstance that led to his being shown into the ball-room of the “Lion,” was that of the house being under repair. That room is still in existence, and a noble and impressive room it is, occupying the upper floor of a two-storeyed building, added to the back of the older house perhaps a hundred and fifty years ago. Lofty, as he describes it, and lighted by tall windows, the features of the two music-galleries and the chandeliers are still there, together with the supper-room at one end, divided off from the greater saloon, and so disproportionately lofty. The ball-room is additionally lighted from the ceiling by a domed skylight. The moulded plaster decorations on walls and ceiling, in the Adams style—that style which so beautifully recast classic conventions—are exquisite, and even yet keep their delicate colouring, as do the emblematic figures of Music and Dancing painted on the door-panels. At rare intervals the room is used for its original purpose, but it more commonly serves, throughout the year, that of a commercial travellers’ stock-room.

The way to this derelict haunt of eighteenth-century gaiety lies down the yard of the inn, and up a fine broad stone stairway, now much chipped, dirty and neglected. On the ground floor is the billiard-room of the present day, formerly the coach dining-room. In crepuscular apartments adjoining, in these times given over to forgotten lumber, the curious may find the deserted kitchens of a bygone age, with the lifts and hatches to upper floors that once conveyed their abundant meals to a vanished generation of John Bulls.

[Illustration: THE “LION” YARD.]

This portion of the house is seen to advantage at the end of the cobble-stoned yard, passing the old coach office remaining there, unchanged, and proceeding to the other end, where the yard passes out into a steep and narrow lane called Stony Bank. Looking back, the great red brick bulk of the ball room, with the stone effigy of a lion on the parapet is seen; the surrounding buildings giving a very powerful impression of the extensive business done here in days of old.

The “Lion” suffered severely when the railway was opened to Shrewsbury, and the more so because its position, from being the most favourable, was suddenly changed into the most unfavourable; the railway-station lying at the other end of the town, and travellers no longer passing as a matter of necessity by Wyle Cop.

For many years the “Lion” has therefore been all too large for present needs, and its upper floors unfurnished and given over to rats, mice and spiders. But it has had better fortune than befell the “Talbot.”

The “Talbot,” in Market street, was the great rival of the “Lion.” It was the house to which came John Jobson to set up the “Nimrod,” and be generally a thorn in the side of Isaac Taylor, of the “Lion” yard. Although much else is lost, fugitive memories still remain of Mrs. Jobson’s turban, hinting that she must have been a remarkable person. Why has not some diarist of that time left us an intimate account of all these things?

After the coaching age and Jobson were both simultaneously snuffed out, in 1842, the “Talbot” was taken by E. Wheeler and Son, followed shortly by one Peters, who had been a coachman on the “Nimrod.” It is to be feared he found it anything but a lucrative speculation, for the house was shortly closed. Some little while later, it was taken by the Post Office. The building still exists, little altered, although the lower

## part is a fancy warehouse, and the upper floors let out as offices, by

the name of “Talbot Chambers.” It is a great square unbeautiful red-brick structure, with the sign, an effigy of that old English hound, the Talbot, still surmounting the entrance.

The “Raven and Bell,” frequently mentioned in the rivalries of the old coach-proprietors, is not to be confounded with the “Raven” in Castle Street, but was situated on Wyle Cop. The “Raven,”—a favourite sign in Shropshire and Staffordshire—and almost exclusively confined to these two counties, derives from the old heraldic coat of the Corbets, that ancient Shropshire family whose ancestral acres are situated at Moreton Corbet, and is an ancient play upon the family name, by way of _corbeau_, the French for raven. Indeed, not only the Corbets of Moreton, but most others of the same name, bear one or more ravens as their heraldic cognizance.

Wyle Cop is still a place of inns. There are the beautiful old “Unicorn,” half-timbered and gabled, and that oddly conjoined “Lion and Pheasant”; and many another to be found throughout the town.

XXVI