CHAPTER X.
Letters and Newspapers.
Among the manifold arrangements which characterise the interior of the British hive there is, we believe, no one which offers to an intelligent observer a more important moral than the respect which is everywhere paid by us to the correspondence of the nation. Prior to the introduction of railways our post-office establishment was the admiration of every foreigner who visited us. But although our light mail-coaches, high-bred horses, glittering harness, skilful coachmen, resolute guards, and macadamised roads were undeniably of the very best description, yet the moral basis on which the whole fabric rested, or rather the power which gave vitality to its movements, evidently was a patriotic desire indigenous in the minds of people of all classes to protect, as their common wealth, the correspondence of the country; and accordingly it mattered not whether on our public thoroughfares were to be seen a butcher’s cart, a brewer’s dray, a bishop’s coach, a nobleman’s landau, the squire’s chariot or his tenant’s waggon;—it mattered not what quantity of vehicles were assembled for purposes good, bad, or indifferent, for church, for race-course, or for theatre;—it mattered not for what party of pleasure or for what political purpose a crowd or a mob might have assembled; for at a single blast through a long tin horn people of all ranks and conditions, however they might be disposed to dispute on all other subjects, were ready from all quarters to join together in exclaiming, “Make way for the mail!”
At the magic whistle of the locomotive engine the whole of the extremely slow, dull, little-bag system we have just referred to suddenly fell to pieces. Nevertheless, the spirit that had animated it flew from the road to the rails, and although our penny-postal arrangements, notwithstanding their rapid growth, are less conspicuous, there exists throughout the country the same honest anxiety that our letter-bags should be circulated over the surface of the United Kingdom with the utmost possible care and despatch. In order, however, to fulfil this general desire the duties which our Postmaster-General is now required to perform are most extraordinary.
The difficulty of transmitting from London to every part of the United Kingdom, and vice versâ, the innumerable quantity of letters which, like mushrooms springing up from a bed of spawn, have arisen from our sudden adoption of a penny-postage, would alone require minute calculations, involving an infinity of details; but when it is considered that besides this circulation from and to the heart of the metropolis—(the average weight of letters and newspapers carried daily by the London and North-Western Railway is seventeen tons)—there exists simultaneously a cross circulation, not only from and to every great city and town, but from every little post-office to every part of the United Kingdom and vice versâ, and moreover to every region on the globe, the eccentric zigzag courses of all these letters to their respective destinations may justly be compared to the fiery tracks and sparks created by the sudden ignition of a sackful of fireworks of all descriptions; of rockets, Catherine wheels, Roman candles, squibs, stars, crackers, flower-pots, some flying straight away, while others are revolving, twisting, radiating, bouncing, exploding in every possible direction and in all ways at once.
To explain the mode in which all our postal arrangements are conducted would not only exceed our limits, but be foreign to our subject; we will therefore only attempt to supply our readers with a slight sketch of a very small portion of this business, namely, the transmission of letters from the metropolis by the London and North-Western Railway’s night mail.
While the passengers by the Lancashire mail-train are taking their seats and making other preparations for their departure, two or three Post-office vans are seen to enter the main carriage gate of the Euston Station, and then to drive close to their tenders on the railway, which form the last carriages of the train. The servants of the Post-office, rapidly unloading their vans, remove a portion of the bags they contained into the travelling-office and the remainder into two large tenders, which, as soon as they are filled, are locked up by the guard, who then takes his place in the flying office, in which we propose to leave him to his flight for 132½ miles—only observing, however, that no sooner has he started than another flying post-office, which had been lying in ambush, advances (with its tender), and, after being loaded in a similar manner, in a quarter of an hour they are despatched to Yorkshire and the East of Scotland.
It had been raining for upwards of twenty-four hours, and it was still pouring when, at about half-past one o’clock of a dark winter’s night, we reached the railway platform at Stafford, to await there the arrival from Euston Station of the night-mail, whose loading and departure we have just described. At that lonely hour, excepting a scarlet-coated guard, who, watching over a pile of letter-bags just arrived from Birmingham by a branch-train, was also waiting for the down-mail, there were no other passengers on the platform; and, save the unceasing pattering of the rain, there appeared nothing to attract the attention but the glaring lamps of three or four servants of the Company. One with his lantern in his left hand was writing in a small memorandum-book placed on a desk before him. Two others with lights suspended round their necks were greasing the axles of some carriage whose form could not be distinguished, while the station-man on duty with his lamp in his hand was pacing up and down the boarded platform.
At this moment the signal-man had scarcely announced the approach of an up-train when there rapidly rushed by a very long, low, dark, solid mass protected by some sort of wet black-looking covering which here and there glistened as it rolled past the four lamps that were turned towards it; in short, it was a common luggage-train. The whole line of waggons, their various contents, as well as the powerful puffing engine that was dragging them through utter darkness, were all inanimate; and it was almost appalling to reflect that, in case of any accident to the drivers, the great train with two red eyes shining in front as well as in rear would proceed alone on its dark iron path—lifeless—senseless—reckless of human life—unconscious of the agonies it might cause or the mischief it might create. It was the work of man—and yet it was ignorant of his power, or even of his name. Devoid of reason or of instinct, it knew nothing—saw nothing—heard nothing—loved nothing—hated nothing—cared for nothing—had no pleasures—no pains—nothing to fear—nothing to hope for; it knew not whence it came,—it rushed forwards it knew not why,—to go it knew not where; it had substance, it had motion, it produced loud sounds, and yet it was as lonely and as destitute of life as the heavens and the earth when in chaos they were without form and void, and when darkness was upon the face of the deep! But these reflections were agreeably interrupted by the arrival of a down-train, swarming alive with passengers, whose busy feet were very shortly to be heard trampling in all directions along or across the platform. At the same time the conductor of the train was delivering over to the Post-office-guard, who had so patiently been awaiting their arrival, a quantity of leather bags of all sizes—white, brown, or black, according to their ages—and which remained in a large heap on the platform until, in about eight minutes, the signal-bell announced first the approach and then the arrival of “the down London mail.”
As soon as this train, which we had been awaiting, stopped, the door of the Flying Post-office was opened, and the bags which had been lying on the platform were no sooner packed either into it or into its tender behind, than, the engine-driver’s whistle announcing the departure of the train, we without delay presented an order which we had obtained to travel in the post-office from Stafford to Crewe, and we were scarcely seated in a corner on some letter-bags to witness the operations of its inmates, when the train started and away we went!
The flying Post-office.
This office, which every evening flies away from London to Glasgow, and wherein Government clerks are busily employed in receiving, delivering, and sorting letters all the way, is a narrow carpeted room, twenty-one feet in length by about seven in breadth, lighted by four large reflecting lamps inserted in the roof, and by another in a corner for the guard. Along about two-thirds of the length of this chamber there is affixed to the side wall a narrow table, or counter, covered with green cloth, beneath which various letter bags are stowed away, and above which the space up to the roof is divided into six shelves fourteen feet in length, each containing thirty-five pigeon-holes of about the size of the little compartments in a dove-cote. At this table, and immediately fronting these pigeon-holes, there were standing as we flew along, three Post-office clerks intently occupied in convulsively snatching up from the green-cloth counter, and in dexterously inserting into the various pigeon-holes, a mass of letters which lay before them, and which, when exhausted, were instantly replaced from bags which the senior clerk cut open, and which the guard who had presented them then shook out for assortment. On the right of the chief clerk the remaining one-third of the carriage was filled nearly to the roof with letter-bags of all sorts and sizes, and which an able-bodied Post-office guard, dressed in his shirt-sleeves and laced waistcoat, was hauling at and adjusting according to their respective brass-labels. At this laborious occupation the clerks continue standing for about four hours and a half; that is to say, the first set sort letters from London to Tamworth, the second from Tamworth to Preston, the third from Preston to Carlisle, and the fourth letters from Carlisle to Glasgow. The clerks employed in this duty do not permanently reside at any of the above stations, but are usually removed from one to the other every three months.
As we sat reclining and ruminating in the corner, the scene was as interesting as it was extraordinary. In consequence of the rapid rate at which we were travelling, the bags which were hanging from the thirty brass pegs on the sides of the office had a tremulous motion, which at every jerk of the train was changed for a moment or two into a slight rolling or pendulous movement, like towels, &c., hanging in a cabin at sea. While the guard’s face, besides glistening with perspiration, was—from the labour of stooping and hauling at large letter-bags—as red as his scarlet coat which was hanging before the wall on a little peg, until at last his cheeks appeared as if they were shining at the lamp immediately above them almost as ruddily as the lamp shone upon them—the three clerks were actively moving their right hands in all directions, working vertically with the same dexterity with which compositors in a printing-office horizontally restore their type into the various small compartments to which each letter belongs. Sometimes a clerk was seen to throw into various pigeon-holes a batch of mourning letters, all directed in the same handwriting, and evidently announcing some death; then one or two registered letters wrapped in green covers. For some time another clerk was solely employed in stuffing into bags newspapers for various destinations. Occasionally the guard, leaving his bags, was seen to poke his burly head out of a large window behind him into pitch darkness, enlivened by the occasional passage of bright sparks from the funnel-pipe of the engine, to ascertain by the flashing of the lamps as he passed them, the precise moment of the train clearing certain stations, in order that he might record it in his “time-bill.” Then again a strong smell of burning sealing-wax announced that he was sealing up, and stamping with the Post-office seal, bags three or four of which he then firmly strapped together for delivery. All of a sudden, the flying chamber received a hard sharp blow, which resounded exactly as if a cannon-shot had struck it. This noise, however, merely announced that a station-post we were at that moment passing, but which was already far behind us, had just been safely delivered of four leather letter-bags, which on putting our head out of the window, we saw quietly lying in the far end of a large strong iron-bound sort of landing-net or cradle, which the guard a few minutes before had by a simple movement lowered on purpose to receive them. But not only had we received four bags, but at the same moment, and apparently by the same blow, we had, as we flew by, dropped at the same station three bags which a Post-office authority had been waiting there to receive. The blow that the pendent bag of letters, moving at the rate say of forty miles an hour, receives in being suddenly snatched away, must be rather greater than that which the flying one receives on being suddenly at that rate dropped on the road. Both operations, however, are effected by a projecting apparatus from the flying post-office coming suddenly into contact with that protruding from the post.
As fast as the clerks could fill the pigeon-holes before them, the letters were quickly taken therefrom, tied up into a bundle, and then by the guard deposited into the leather bag to which they belonged. On very closely observing the clerks as they worked, we discovered that, instead of sorting their letters into the pigeon-holes according to their superscriptions, they placed them into compartments of their own arrangement, and which were only correctly labelled in their own minds; but as every clerk is held answerable for the accuracy of his assortment, he is very properly allowed to execute it in whatever way may be most convenient to his mind or hand.
Besides lame writing and awkward spelling, it was curious to observe what a quantity of irrelevant nonsense is superscribed upon many letters, as if the writer’s object was purposely to conceal from the sorting clerk the only fact he ever cares to ascertain, namely, the post town. Their patience and intelligence, however, are really beyond all praise; and although sometimes they stand for eight or ten seconds holding a letter close to their lamp, turning sometimes their head and then it, yet it rarely happens that they fail to decipher it. In opening one bag, a lady’s pasteboard work-box appeared all in shivers. It had been packed in the thinnest description of whitey-brown paper. The clerk spent nearly two minutes in searching among the fragments for the direction, which he at last discovered in very pale ink, written apparently through a microscope with the point of a needle. The letters sorted in the flying post-office are, excepting a few “late letters,” principally cross-post letters, which, although packed into one bag, are for various localities. For instance, at Stafford the mail takes up a bag made up for Birmingham, Wolverhampton and intermediate places, the letters for which, being intermixed, are sorted by the way, and left at the several stations.
The bags have also to be stowed away in compartments according to their respective destinations. One lot for Manchester, Liverpool, and Dublin; one for Chester; a bundle of bags for Newcastle-under-Lyne, Market-Drayton, Eccleshall, Stone, Crewe, Rhuabon; a quantity of empty bags to be filled coming back; a lot for Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Carlisle; and one great open bag contained all the letter-bags for Dublin taken upon the road.
The minute arrangements necessary for the transaction of all this important business at midnight, while the train is flying through the dark, it would be quite impossible to describe. The occupation is not only highly confidential, but it requires unceasing attention, exhausting to body and mind. Some time ago, while the three clerks, with their right elbows moving in all directions, were vigorously engaged in sorting their letters, and while the guard, with the light of his lamp shining on the gilt buttons and gold lace which emblazoned the pockets of his waistcoat, was busily sealing a letter-bag, a collision took place, which, besides killing four men, at the same moment chucked the sorting clerks from their pigeon-holes to the letter-bags in the guard’s compartment. In due time the chief clerk recovered from the shock; but what had happened—why he was lying on the letter-bags—why nobody was sorting—until he recovered from his stupor he could not imagine.