It were vain, nowadays, to seek any of the old starting-points from London. The late Mr. Frederick Locker-Lampson asked in 1896, “Are ‘The Bull and Mouth,’ ‘The Spread Eagle,’ The Swan with Two Necks,’ and ‘The Green Man and Still,’ yet in existence?” With some little research he would have discovered that—with the sole exception of the last-named—they are not. The “Bull and Mouth” in later years became the “Queen’s Hotel,” and was demolished only when the site was required for an extension of the General Post Office in 1887. At the same time as the “Queen’s” disappeared, the street at the side of it, called from the old inn “Bull and Mouth Street,” was stopped up. In this street was the entrance to the famous old coaching-stables which were in the last years of their existence used as a railway receiving-office for goods. On their being pulled down, the grotesque plaster sign, representing a giant face with yawning mouth in which stood a bull, was removed to the Guildhall Museum, where it may still be seen, together with the yet larger and more elaborate sign which decorated the frontage of the “Queen’s.” This also included a mouth and a bull, set amidst a frame of plaster fruits and flowers, with the inscription:—
“Milo the Cretonian,
An ox slew with his fist,
And ate it up at one meal,
Ye gods! what a glorious twist.”
The origin, however, of the curious sign had nothing to do with this hungry person. Precisely what was that origin is never likely to be known; for although the legend that it derived from the capture of “Boulogne Mouth”—i.e. Boulogne Harbour—in the reign of Henry the Eighth is in general acceptation, it has been shrewdly suspected that this was a tale wickedly invented by George Steevens, a literary practical joker, who palmed off many similar stories upon unsuspecting antiquaries at the end of last century. A perhaps more likely story is that the sign was originally the “Bowl and Mouth.”
Under Sherman’s rule the “Bull and Mouth” became a mighty resort of coaches to and from all parts, but more especially the north, and his underground stables formed one of the sights of London.
Edward Sherman was a man of many parts, and had a varied career. Originally a stockbroker, he followed Willans at the “Bull and Mouth” in 1823, and rebuilt it as the “Queen’s” in 1830, continuing the stables under the old name, and eventually reconstructing them. The money for these enterprises came from three old and wealthy ladies whom he married in succession. If the stranger, unversed in the build and colour of coaches, could not pick out the somewhat old-fashioned, bright-yellow vehicles as Sherman’s, he was helped in identifying them by the pictorial sign of the inn painted on the panels—rather a startling one, by the way, to the rustics. Sherman, however, had not the prescience of Chaplin or of Horne, who clearly foresaw the success of railways, and he kept his coaches on the roads for some time after they were opened to their destinations. He was sufficiently ill-advised not to come to terms with the railway companies, and actually attempted, with the “Red Rover,” to run the Manchester trains off. Of course this could not last very long, and Sherman withdrew after having lost seven thousand pounds in a gallant, but futile, competition with steam.
In its prime the “Bull and Mouth” sent forth the Edinburgh and Aberdeen Royal Mail by York; the Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen coach by Ferry-bridge to Newcastle, where the Glasgow passengers changed; the Glasgow and Carlisle Royal Mail; the Newcastle “Wellington”; Shrewsbury and Holyhead “Union” and “Oxonian”; Birmingham “Old Post Coach” and “Aurora”; Leeds Royal Mail and “Express”; and Leicester “Union Post Coach.”
The site of the “Swan with Two Necks” is now occupied by the London and North-Western and South-Western Joint Goods Depot, in Gresham Street. Modern sculptured keystones may be seen over the entrances, bearing the effigy of a double-headed swan. This sign, like that of the “Bull and Mouth,” is a corruption of a widely different term; originally, indeed, the “Swan with Two Nicks,” from the particular “nicks” with which the bills of the swans belonging to the Vintners’ Company on the Thames were marked. The City Companies each had their swans on the river, and even nowadays they are maintained on the upper reaches. The young cygnets were marked at the annual festival of “swan-upping,” at which the City magnates used hugely to enjoy themselves. The old and the new “nicks” of the Vintners’ Company are pictured here.
Old And New Swan Nicks So far back as 1556, the “Swane with ij Nekes at Mylke Street End” was known, and was then the property of the Vintners. In the coaching era it is best remembered as the headquarters of the great William Chaplin’s huge coaching business. Chaplin succeeded William Waterhouse, who had established himself here in 1792, issuing a curious token bearing the representation of a mail-coach on one side and that of the Double-Necked Swan on the other, with the legend, “Speed, Regularity, and Security. Payable at the Mail Coach Office, Lad Lane, London, W.W.”
Lad Lane was until recent years the name by which this part of Gresham Street was known, while the inn itself was generally called by the coaching fraternity the “Wonderful Bird.”
Chaplin had in early days been a coachman himself. His career would have delighted that sturdy moralist, Hogarth, painter of the successful career of the Industrious Apprentice, for from that useful but humble position he rose to be the largest coach-proprietor in England, Deputy-Chairman of the London and Southampton (now London and South-Western) Railway, and Member of Parliament for Salisbury. He is said to have accumulated half a million of money. Twenty-seven mails left London every night, and of these Chaplin horsed fourteen for various distances. Very many stage-coaches were in his hands, and at the height of the coaching era he is said to have owned nearly two thousand horses. He was an entirely level-headed man, and, seeing at an early stage that railways must succeed, threw in his lot with them. Railway directors were exceedingly anxious to win over the coaching proprietors, and to induce them to withdraw from the road, so that with no coaches running the public should of necessity, whether they liked it or not, be compelled to travel by rail. Chaplin sold off his stock before the oncoming railways depreciated it, and, joining Benjamin Worthy Horne, of the “Golden Cross,” Charing Cross, founded the great carrying firm of Chaplin and Horne, which enjoyed the exclusive agency for the London and Birmingham Railway. There can be little doubt, although it was denied by the early officials of that line, that Chaplin and Horne were really bought off the road, and the sum of £10,000 has been mentioned as the price of their withdrawal. Before that time had come, coaches issued from Chaplin’s yard for many places on the north-western roads: the Carlisle Royal Mail; the Birmingham Royal Mail, “Courier,” and “Balloon Post Coach”; the Chester “New Coach”; Coventry “Light Post Coach”; Liverpool Royal Mail; Holyhead “New Mail” and a stage-coach without any particular name; and the Manchester Royal Mail, “Defiance,” “Regulator,” and “Prince Saxe-Cobourg.” The “Spread Eagle” in Gracechurch Street has also disappeared. It was at one time a house of Chaplin’s, and was afterwards owned in succession, together with the “Cross Keys” next door, by Mrs. Nelson and Mrs. Mountain.
Modern sign of the “Swan with Two Necks”
The “Green Man and Still,” the last of the quartet of inns inquired after by Mr. Locker-Lampson, is the only one now standing, and may be seen at the corner of Oxford and Argyll Streets, close by Oxford Circus. It was not a coaching hostelry in the fullest sense, being only a place of call for the Oxford “Age,” and for the Harrow and other north-westerly “short stages,” running between London and the suburbs. It is now a railway receiving-office. This curious sign probably alludes to the old profession of the “herb-doctors,” who distilled medicines from wild or cultivated herbs. There were other inns whence Great North Road coaches set out, but they have all vanished. The “George and Blue Boar,” Holborn, whence the famous “Stamford Regent” started, has long since been pulled down, and the “Inns of Court Hotel” stood on its site. The hotel building remains, but about 1912 it ceased to be a hotel, and has since been converted into offices for an Insurance Company. The “Regent” originally left London at six o’clock in the evening, but in 1822 the hour was altered to six in the morning, an unearthly time for those who had to go some distance to reach Holborn, and necessitating, perhaps, getting up at three o’clock. The announcement by the proprietors that this alteration was for the “more perfect convenience” of their patrons seems ironical:—
SIX O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING
From London.THE PROPRIETORS OF
THE REGENT COACHRespectfully inform the public and their friends in particular, that, for their more perfect convenience, and to keep pace with the daily improvements in travelling, the hour of its leaving London will be altered on Monday, the 13th of May (and continued during the summer months),
TO SIX O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING,
Instead of Night.The arrangements that are forming in furtherance of this long-desired alteration will ensure a steady and punctual conveyance of Passengers to Stamford by a Quarter before Six o’clock, and to Melton by a Quarter before Nine o’clock in the Evening.
The hours of leaving Melton and Stamford will NOT be altered.
The proprietors take this opportunity to acknowledge their sense of the decided patronage shown to the Regent Coach under their several regulations, and to repeat their promise that no exertion shall be wanting to make it one of the most desirable conveyances to and from London.
Passengers and Parcels booked at Mr. Weldon’s, and the Bull and Swan Inn, Stamford; and at Mr. Sharp’s, Bell Inn, Melton.—Stamford, May 1, 1822.
The “Spread Eagle,” Gracechurch Street
The “Saracen’s Head,” Snow Hill, which must not he confounded with the other and equally celebrated “Saracen’s Head” in Aldgate High Street, was another very notable coaching establishment, and a galleried inn of picturesqueness and antiquity. Alas! that it has long since disappeared. Its history went back beyond the fifteenth century, and a reference made to it in 1522, when the suite of the Emperor Charles the Fifth lay here, speaks of the house as of some importance:—“The signe of the Sersyns hed: xxx beddes, a stable for xl horses.”
The sign, of course deriving from the Crusades, itself gives the inn a very high antiquity. It was a sign of a gruesome and savage aspect, and had its origin in the pictures the returning Crusaders drew of their adversaries. As Selden says:—“Our countrymen pictured them with huge, big, terrible faces, when in truth they were like other men. But this,” he adds slyly, “they did for their own credits.” The inn owed its later celebrity to Dickens, who made it the London inn of Mr. Squeers. Thus he describes it:—“Near to the jail, and by consequence near to Smithfield, on that particular part of Snow Hill where omnibus horses going eastward seriously think of falling down on purpose, and where horses in hackney cabriolets going westward not unfrequently fall by accident, is the coachyard of the Saracen’s Head Inn; its portal guarded by two Saracens’ heads and shoulders frowning upon you from each side of the gateway. The inn itself, garnished with another Saracen’s head, frowns upon you from the top of the yard. When you walk up this yard you will see the booking-office on your left and the tower of St. Sepulchre’s Church darting abruptly up into the sky on your right, and a gallery of bedrooms upon both sides.”
There is a “Saracen’s Head” on Snow Hill to this day, but it is a modern building. From the old house went the “Lord Nelson,” York, Newcastle, and Edinburgh coach; the “Post,” despite its name, a slow-coach, for Carlisle and Penrith, by Doncaster, Ferrybridge, and Greta Bridge, doubtless the one by which Mr. Wackford Squeers took his “dear pupils” to Dotheboys Hall; and coaches to Hull, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and Shrewsbury, besides others for the western roads. The “Saracen’s Head” was kept by Mrs. Mountain, in succession to her husband and her husband’s father. Her son, Peter, managed the business for her, but it must not be supposed that she took no active part in it. To the contrary, Mrs. Sarah Ann Mountain, like her contemporary, Mrs. Nelson, of the “Bull,” Aldgate, possessed the most brilliant business capacity. She built coaches, as well as horsing them, and earned a profit by charging her partners down the road the mileage which in the usual course of business would have been paid over to a coach-builder. There was no more expressive sight in the London of the beginning of the nineteenth century than the simultaneous starting of the mails every evening from the General Post Office. Londoners and country-cousins alike were never weary of the spectacle of the smart coaches, the business-like coachmen, and the resplendent, scarlet-coated guards preparing to travel through the night, north, south, east, or west, with his Majesty’s mails. Even the passengers shone with a reflected glory, and felt important as, one after the other, the twenty-seven mails began at the stroke of eight o’clock to move off from the double file that lined the street.
The “Saracen’s Head,” Snow Hill
That street was not the broad thoroughfare of St. Martin’s-le-Grand, but the narrow one of Lombard Street, in which the General Post Office was situated for many years, until 1829, when what is now called the “old” General Post Office, but was then the newly completed building of Smirke’s, was occupied. The old headquarters can still be seen, in the Lombard Street Post Office of to-day. It is from here that the picture of the mails starting, forming the frontispiece of this volume, was taken. To our eyes, accustomed to the crowded thoroughfare of modern times, the street appears supremely dull and desolate, but that is only a retrospective way of looking at it.
Here is a testimony to the beauty of the scene. It is eloquent testimony, for it is De Quincey’s:—“On any night the spectacle was beautiful. The absolute perfection of all the appointments about the carriages and the harness, their strength, their brilliant cleanliness, their beautiful simplicity—but, more than all, the royal magnificence of the horses—were what might first have fixed the attention. Every carriage, on every morning of the year, was taken down to an official inspector for examination—wheels, axles, linchpins, poles, glasses, lamps, were all critically probed and tested. Every part of every carriage had been cleaned, every horse had been groomed, with as much rigour as if they belonged to a private gentleman; and that part of the spectacle offered itself always. . . . Every moment are shouted aloud by the post-office servants, and summoned to draw up, the great ancestral names of cities known to history through a thousand years—Lincoln, Winchester, Portsmouth, Gloucester, Oxford, Bristol, Manchester, York, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Perth, Stirling, Aberdeen—expressing the grandeur of the empire by the antiquity of its towns, and the grandeur of the mail establishment by the diffusive radiation of its separate missions. Every moment you hear the thunder of lids locked down upon the mail-bags. That sound to each individual mail is the signal for drawing off, which process is the finest part of the entire spectacle. Then came the horses into play. Horses! Can these be horses that bound off with the action and gestures of leopards? What stir! what sea-like ferment! what a thundering of wheels! what a trampling of hoofs! what a sounding of trumpets!”
Now for Post Office history. Much has been made at the “old” General Post Office in St. Martin’s-le-Grand; and although the building was not in existence until 1829, it has sent forth and received many mail-coaches. Its disappearance in 1912, we say, therefore severs the last link by which this busy quarter was connected with the old days.
The Mails starting from the General Post Office, 1832
The story of the Post Office goes back long before the G.P.O. was situated either here or at Lombard Street. The original Post Office was off Eastcheap. When it was there, the course of post between London and Edinburgh took three days. The first regular service was established in 1635, when Charles the First, to end the inefficiency of the communications between the two capitals, inaugurated “a running post or two, to run night and day, between Edinburgh and London, to go thither and come back again in six days.” We may suppose that this did not work very well, for in 1649 we find the city of London establishing a post of its own with a regular staff of runners and postmasters between London and the North.
But with the Restoration came the establishment of the General Post Office and an instantaneous decline in the efficiency of the post, six days instead of three being taken for the single journey to or from Edinburgh. This roused the towns on the way to indignant protests, and the post was accelerated to “three and a half or four days,” the acceleration being slower than the original time.
But however keenly the intermediate towns may have felt this, it could not have mattered much to Edinburgh, whose mail-bag was very scanty. One day in 1745, we are told, the mail brought only one letter, for the British Linen Company; and on another day in the same year only one was despatched to London, for Sir William Pulteney, the banker.
In 1750 things were no better, but eight years later an Edinburgh merchant, George Chalmers, procured an improvement. Before 1758 the Great North Mail set out three times a week and took eighty-seven hours in going north, and not fewer than one hundred and thirty-one from Edinburgh to London. This last itinerary was lengthened so greatly in time on account of stoppages made at Berwick and at Newcastle, ranging from three hours at one to twenty-four at the other. These delays Chalmers, in corresponding with the officials, proved to be quite needless. He also induced them to avoid the old and longer route through Thorne and York and to take the alternative road by Boroughbridge, thus shortening the journey by twelve miles. The times were then fixed at eighty-two hours for the northward-bound mail, and eighty-five for the south. For his services the Government made Chalmers a grant of £600. Some years afterwards he induced the Post Office to run the mails six days a week.
But a greater than Chalmers was at hand in Palmer, the organiser of the mail-coach service. Palmer accomplished, according to De Quincey, “two things very hard to do on our little planet, the earth, however cheap they may be held by eccentric people in comets: he had invented mail-coaches, and he had married the daughter of a duke. He was therefore just twice as great a man as Galileo, who did certainly invent (or, which is the same thing, discover) the satellites of Jupiter, those very next things extant to mail-coaches in the two capital pretensions of speed and keeping time; but, on the other hand, who did not marry the daughter of a duke.” Palmer married, in point of fact, Lady Madeline Gordon, daughter of the Duke of Richmond, but De Quincey does not lay the stress he should have done on his having fought his postal scheme to success against the obstinacy and red-tapeism of the Post Office officials, itself an enterprise sufficient to daunt any but the stoutest heart. Government officials have a wonderful power of passive resistance and an insensibility to argument and proof which might be envied by a lamp-post. It was thought a brilliant rejoinder when one of these Post Office dunderheads replied to Palmer’s scheme for supplanting the slow and uncertain post-boys by fast coaches with the observation that there was no reason why the post should be the swiftest conveyance in England! No doubt this witty gentleman resigned in an access of mortification when Palmer actually succeeded in being appointed Controller-General of the Post Office, with a salary of £1,500 a year and a two and a-half per cent. commission on a rise of the income above the £240,000 at which it stood when he was placed at the head of affairs. The first mail-coach was put upon the Bath Road on the 8th of August 1784, and its success was so great and immediate that the chief towns of the kingdom presently began to petition for similar facilities to be accorded them. York was the first successful applicant, and a mail was put on the road between London, York, and Edinburgh in October of the same year, taking three nights and two days to perform the journey. This was not a very remarkable rate of speed, to be sure, but the times were not so hurried then. A greater speed was attained when the roads began to be reorganised by Telford and Macadam. Macadam’s method of metalling the existing roads and Telford’s reconstruction of steep and winding highways produced great results. To Macadam was due the greater speeds attained at last on the mail route between London and Edinburgh; for, although Telford’s improved road was begun in 1824, it was never completed owing to the introduction of railways. Government had, in fact, by this time recognised the necessity of good roads, and, fresh from the reorganisation of the mail route between London and Holyhead, had determined on an improved communication between England and Scotland. This road, already referred to, was to be straight and as flat as engineering science could contrive it, and a portion—that between Edinburgh and Morpeth—was constructed about 1824, going by way of Soutra Hill, Lauderdale, Coldstream, and Wooler. The route between London and Morpeth was also surveyed and authorised, and portions between London and York actually begun, when the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1825 convinced the authorities that the days of the road were numbered.
But although it was long apparent that a change was impending, coaches were not entirely run off the Great North Road for another twenty years, and Post Office surveyors were still busy expediting the mails over short cuts and roads of more favourable gradients. Thus in 1832 we find the Scotch mail going by way of Selby. Here is the official time-bill for that year:—
MILES |
|
||
|
London |
dep. |
8.00 P.M. |
12½ |
Waltham Cross |
arr. |
9.25 ,, |
22 |
Ware |
,, |
10.26 ,, |
35½ |
Buckland |
,, |
11.52 ,, |
45½ |
Arrington |
,, |
12.57 A.M. |
60 |
Huntingdon |
,, |
2.30 ,, |
65¼ |
Alconbury Hill |
,, |
3.03 ,, |
72¼ |
Stilton |
,, |
3.45 ,, |
87 |
Stamford |
,, |
5.15 ,, |
95 |
Stretton |
,, |
6.03 ,, |
108½ |
Grantham |
arr. |
7.23 ,, |
|
dep. |
8.03 ,, |
|
115½ |
Long Bennington |
arr. |
8.53 ,, |
122¼ |
Newark |
,, |
9.30 ,, |
132¾ |
Scarthing Moor |
,, |
10.34 ,, |
145½ |
Barnby Moor |
,, |
11.49 ,, |
155¼ |
Rossington Bridge |
,, |
12.47 P.M. |
159½ |
Doncaster |
,, |
1.12 ,, |
166¼ |
Askerne |
,, |
1.55 ,, |
179¾ |
Selby |
,, |
3.21 ,, |
194 |
York |
arr. |
4.54 ,, |
|
dep. |
5.34 ,, |
|
207¼ |
Easingwold |
arr. |
6.54 ,, |
218 |
Thirsk |
,, |
7.58 ,, |
227 |
Northallerton |
,, |
8.52 ,, |
243 |
Darlington |
,, |
10.28 ,, |
261½ |
Durham |
,, |
12.23 ,, |
276 |
Newcastle-on-Tyne |
arr. |
1.50 ,, |
|
dep. |
1.53 ,, |
|
290½ |
Morpeth |
arr. |
3.22 ,, |
300½ |
Felton |
,, |
4.23 ,, |
309¾ |
Alnwick |
,, |
5.17 ,, |
324½ |
Belford |
arr. |
6.47 ,, |
|
dep. |
7.17 ,, |
|
329¾ |
Berwick-on-Tweed |
arr. |
8.47 ,, |
353½ |
Houndswood |
,, |
10.09 ,, |
369¼ |
Dunbar |
,, |
11.41 ,, |
380¼ |
Haddington |
,, |
12.45 P.M. |
397¼ |
Edinburgh |
,, |
2.23 ,, |
Time—42 hours 23 minutes |
|||
The “up” mail was timed considerably slower, 45 hours 39 minutes.
The punctuality of the mails was so great that the Glasgow and the Edinburgh mails, which went by Shoreditch and Islington respectively, and took different routes as far as Alconbury Hill, where their roads met, could always be depended upon to keep the official interval of four minutes which divided them at that point. Their route was identical between Alconbury Hill and Doncaster, where the Glasgow mail branched off to the left to Ferrybridge and Greta Bridge.
This was the ne plus ultra of Post Office enterprise on the Great North Road, and closes an era.
We have seen with what extraordinary speed letters were carried in the time of Charles the First between London and Edinburgh; but how did folk travel? They rode horseback, from kings, to nobles, and down to merchants; princesses, madam, or my lady riding pillion. Private carriages—“coaches,” they were called—had been introduced in 1553, when Queen Mary rode in one, as a novelty, from London to Westminster, drawn by six horses. In 1556 Sir Thomas Hoby had one of these strange machines, and just because the fact is expressly mentioned we see how rare they were. In fact, they went out of use altogether for a time, and were reintroduced by William Boonen, Queen Elizabeth’s Dutch coachman, in 1564. On this occasion they came into better favour, and their numbers must have greatly increased, for a Bill “to restrain their excessive use” was introduced to Parliament, and rejected, in 1601. But both their make and the fearful condition of the roads forbade them being used in the country. Moreover, they had only shutters in place of windows, the first “glass coach” being that used by the Duke of York in 1661.
It was in 1658 that the first stage-coach between London and Edinburgh was put on the road. It set out once a fortnight, but the length of the whole journey and just what kind of vehicle it was are unknown. Four days, however, and two pounds were consumed in travelling between London and York. The cost of the whole journey was four pounds.
In 1734 things do not seem to have been much better, John Dale advertising in the May of that year that a coach would take the road from Edinburgh for London “towards the end of each week, to be performed in nine days, or three days sooner than any coach that travels that road.” After this matters went from bad to worse, and speed was slower twenty years later than it had been for a long time.
The Edinburgh Courant of 1754 contained the following advertisement:—
THE EDINBURGH STAGE COACH,
for the better accommodation of passengers, will be altered to a new genteel, two-end, glass coach machine, being on steel springs, exceeding light, and easy to go in ten days in summer and twelve in winter; to set out the
First Tuesday in March,
and continue it from Hosea Eastgate’s, the Coach and Horses in Dean Street, Soho, London, and from John Somerville’s in the Canongate, Edinburgh, every other Tuesday, and meet at Burrow Bridge on Saturday night and set out from thence on Monday morning, and get to London and Edinburgh on Friday. In winter to set out from London to Edinburgh every other (alternate) Monday morning, and to go to Burrow Bridge on Saturday night. Passengers to pay as usual.
Performed, if God permits, by
Your dutiful servant,
Hosea Eastgate.
Even Hosea Eastgate’s conveyance stands forth as a miracle of swiftness and frequency when compared with the coach of 1763, which set out once a month and took a fortnight, if the weather was favourable! Probably this degeneracy of coaches was due to the practice of travellers clubbing together to hire a post-chaise for the journey. This was a plan eminently characteristic of the Scottish mind. It both secured quicker travelling and saved expense. The Edinburgh papers of that time often contained advertisements inquiring for a fellow-passenger to share these costs and charges.
Edinburgh, as a matter of fact, even now a far cry, was beyond the ken of most Londoners in those times, and London was to Edinburgh folks a place dimly heard of, and never to be visited, save perhaps once in a lifetime. York, half-way, was better known, and was well supplied with coaches. The “Black Swan” in Coney Street, York, received and sent forth a coach—in after years known as the “York Old Coach”—so early as 1698. This appears to have always laid up for the winter and come out again in April, like the cuckoo, as a harbinger of spring. One of these spring announcements was discovered, some years since, in an old drawer at the “Black Swan.” It runs:—
York Four Days
Stage-Coach.
Begins on Friday the 12th of April 1706.
All that are defirous to pafs from London to York, or from York to London, or any other Place on that Road; Let them Repair to the Black Swan in Holbourn in London, and to the Black Swan in Coney Street in York.
At both which Places they may be received in a Stage Coach every Monday, Wednefday, and Friday, which performs the whole Journey in Four Days (if God permits). And fets forth at Five in the Morning.
And returns from York to Stamford in two days, and from Stamford by Huntingdon to London in two days more. And the like Stages on their return.
Allowing each Paffenger 14lb. weight, and all above 3d. a Pound.
Performed By
Benjamin Kingman.
Henry Harrifon.
Walter Bayne’s.Alfo this gives Notice that Newcaftle Stage Coach fets out from York every Monday and Friday, and from Newcaftle every Monday and Friday.
It is singular that this coach should have had a “Black Swan” at either end of its journey. The London house was in later years the well-known “Black Swan Distillery” in Holborn.
To display the many coaches, their names and times of arrival and departure in these pages would afford but dull reading. Besides, Paterson and Cary, those encyclopædic old road-books, contain lists of them in interminable array: the “Highflyers,” “Rockinghams,” “Unions,” “Amitys,” “Defiances,” “Wellingtons,” “Bluchers,” “Nelsons,” “Rodneys,” and what not. There was so extraordinary a run upon these popular names that they are often triplicated—and sometimes occur six times—on the local and byroad coaches; with the result that if the traveller desired to travel by the “Highflyer,” let us say, to Edinburgh, he had to carefully sort it out from other “Highflyers” which flew not only to Leeds but to all kinds of obscure places.
The early stage-coaches must have been terribly trying. They were, as Byron says of the “kibitka,” “a cursed kind of carriage without springs.” As time went on they were not only provided with glass windows, but—as duly set forth in the advertisements—were furnished with springs and cushions. The resources of civilisation were not exhausted at this point, for it was gravely announced that the guards were armed, and the coaches were bullet-proof!
The life of a coach-proprietor was all hard work, with no little anxiety attached. Up early and to bed late—for on however large a scale his business might be, it was one peculiarly dependent upon the master’s eye—he knew the inner meaning of the primeval curse, and earned his living by the sweat of his brow. And, lest that was not sufficient, the Government sweated him in a financial sense. The coaching business was the especial prey of Chancellors of the Exchequer, and yielded huge returns. If it be argued that coach-proprietors, unlike railway companies, had no parliamentary powers to obtain, and no enormous expenses for purchase of land and construction of lines, this can be met by setting forth the heavy duties and taxes, the great outlay on turnpike tolls, and the relatively high cost of haulage by horses. The initial expenses of a railway are immense, the upkeep of lines and buildings large; but the actual cost of steam-power as against horse-traction is absurdly little. Railways, of course, pay passenger duty, and immense sums in the aggregate for rates and taxes; but they are not burdened as the coaches were. If it cost from £3 10s. to £6 15s. to travel “outside” or “inside” by ordinary stage-coach between London and Edinburgh, those high figures were the necessary results of Government exactions and turnpike imposts. Duties and taxes varied from time to time, but a stage-coach licensed, about 1830, to carry fifteen passengers paid a duty of threepence a mile, whether the coach carried a full load or not. Thus, for every single journey, a coach licensed to that extent paid £4 19s. 3d. A coach could be licensed to carry a smaller number, when the duties would be proportionately lighter, and coaches licensed for fifteen or so during the summer would take out a licence for perhaps six or eight in winter, when travellers were few and far between.
Suppose, now, that we roughly add up the working expenses of a stage-coach to Edinburgh. We start with the passenger-duty of £4 19s. 3d. To this we add, say, £4 for hire of coach at the rate of 2½d. a mile; £4 19s. 3d. for horsing, at 3d. a mile; and £6 12s., turnpikes, at 4d. This gives a total of £20 10s. 6d. But we have not yet done with expenses, including wages for coachmen, guards, ostlers, and helpers; advertising, rent, oil for lamps, greasing, washing, etc.
There would be six, or perhaps seven, coachmen, one driving about sixty miles, when he would be relieved by another; and perhaps four guards, because guards, not having the physical exertion of driving, could go longer journeys. The proportion of their week’s wages must be added to the debit account for the one journey, together with the proportion of the £5 yearly tax payable for every coachman and guard employed, and a similar annual sum for the coach itself. Any more items? Oh yes! Office expenses, clerks, etc., and incidentals. If we lump all these items together, they will mean an additional £12 cost on every journey to or from Edinburgh, bringing the cost to the proprietors to over £32.
Now for the other side of the account. Our coach is licensed for fifteen, and if we carry our four insides and eleven outsides all the way, it holds £65 10s. at the fares named above—about 4d. and 2d. a mile respectively. But how often were those fifteen “through” passengers? Not more, perhaps, than half would be bound for Edinburgh. Others might alight at York, or even at Grantham or Stamford. Others, again, might go to Newcastle. For fares thus lost, the proprietors looked to chance passengers; but the shillings and perhaps the two shillings taken on the way for short distances went, by common consent, into the coachmen’s and guards’ pockets, and were never entered on the way-bill. In this manner, and by their “tips,” the men added to their somewhat meagre wages, which, rightly considered, were retaining-fees rather than full payment. This practice was generally known as “shouldering.” Some proprietors, however, were stricter than others, and did not allow it. Of course it went on all the same, and the standing toast which they were compelled to give at annual coaching dinners, “Success to shouldering,” with the proviso, “but don’t let me find you at it,” was a tacit acknowledgment of the custom. In later days, when proprietors paid slightly higher wages and tried to forbid tips, the coachmen were loth to give up these odd sums, for the diminution of tips was greater than the increase of wages. They then pocketed larger fares, and called the practice “swallowing.” A tale is told of a coach approaching town, and the coachman asking his box-seat passenger if he had any luggage. “No,” said the passenger. “Then,” rejoined the coachman, “do you mind getting down here, sir, because I mean to swallow you.” The passenger got down, and was “swallowed” accordingly.
The average takings of the coach would certainly never, at the best of it, come to more than £50 a journey, leaving a balance of £15 10s. profit. Now, taking a year of three hundred and thirteen days, and coaches “up” and “down,” this gives a profit of £9,702—not, be it borne in mind, going to one man. The “end men” had the greatest share, as they had also the heaviest expenses, and the “middle-ground men” got little beyond the mileage on which they horsed the coaches; but with twenty-five stages or so, and twenty-five participants in the profits, it will be seen that the individual earnings on one coach could not be classed very high.
It was a costly as well as a lengthy business to travel from London to Edinburgh. Not so lengthy, of course, by mail as by stage-coach, but much more expensive. If you wished to take it comfortably during the forty-two hours and a-half or so of travelling, you went inside, especially if it happened to be in winter; but an inside place cost eleven guineas and a-half, which was thought a much larger sum in 1830 than it would be nowadays. Accordingly, the stalwart and the not particularly well-to-do, who at the same time wanted to travel quickly, went outside, whereby they saved no less than four guineas.
But let not the reader think that these respective sums of eleven and a-half and seven and a-half guineas comprised the whole of the traveller’s expenses in the old days. There were numerous people to tip, such as porters, waiters, and last, but certainly not the least of them, the coachmen and guards, who at the end of their respective journeys, when they left their seats to a new guard or a new Jehu, “kicked” the passengers, as the expressive phrase went, for their respective two shillings or so. To be kicked at intervals in this figurative manner, all the way between London and Edinburgh, was not physically painful, but it came expensive; and what with the necessary meals and refreshments during those forty-two hours or so, it could scarce have cost an “inside” less than fifteen guineas, or an “outside” less than eleven.
Now let us take the mazy “Bradshaw” or the simpler “A B C” railway guides, and see what it will cost us in time and pocket to reach the capital of Scotland. A vast difference, you may be sure. It is possible to go by three different routes, but the distance is much the same, and the times vary little, whether you go by Midland, London and North-Western, or by the Great Northern Railway. The last-named has, on the whole, the best of it, with a mileage of 395 miles, and a fast train performing the journey in seven hours and twenty-five minutes. It costs by any of these routes for first-class travelling, which answers to the “inside” of old times, fifty-seven shillings and sixpence, and thirty-two shillings and eightpence by third-class, equivalent to the “outside.” [40] You need not tip unless you like, and even then but once or twice, and assuredly no one will ask you for one. Whether you travel “first” or “third,” a dining-saloon and an excellent dinner are at your service for a moderate sum, and the sun scarce rises or sets with greater certainty than that the Scotch express or its London equivalent will set out or reach its destination at its appointed minute.
Accidents—when they happen—are beyond comparison more fearful on the railway than ever they were on the coaches; but they are rare indeed when it is considered how many trains are run. Coaching accidents were frequent, but just because they seldom ended fatally they do not figure so largely in coaching annals as might be expected. A dreadful accident, however, happened in 1805 to the Leeds “Union” coach, owing to the reins breaking and the horses dashing the vehicle against a tree. This occurred at a point about half a mile from Ferrybridge. William Hope, the coachman, and an outside passenger were killed, and many others seriously injured. The jury imposed a deodand of £5 on the coach and £10 on the horses.
In later years, an almost equally serious disaster happened to another Leeds coach, the “Express.” It was racing with the opposition “Courier,” which had been stopped at the bottom of the hill for the purpose of taking off the drag, and in the effort to pass was upset, with the result that a woman was killed on the spot, another was laid up for a year with a broken leg, and other passengers were more or less injured. Probably because of the evident recklessness displayed by the coachman, a deodand of £1,400 was laid on the coach. The mail-coaches were not so often involved in disasters as the stages. They had not the incentive to race, and smashes arising from this form of competition were infrequent. But other forms of accident threatened them and the stage-coaches alike. There were, for instance, fogs, and they were exceedingly dangerous. Penny, an old driver of the Edinburgh mail, was killed from this cause. Starting one foggy night, he grew nervous, and asked the guard, a younger and stronger man, to take the reins. He did so, and drove up a bank. The mail was upset, and Penny was killed.
Snow and frost were the especial foes of the mails on the northern stretches of the Great North Road, just as widespread floods were in the Huntingdonshire and Nottinghamshire levels, by Ouse and Trent; so that no mail-coach was completely equipped which did not in the winter months carry a snow-shovel.
But it was not always the north-country coaches that felt the fury of the snowstorms. The famous storm of December 1836 blocked all roads impartially. The Louth mail, which left the Great North Road at Norman Cross, had to be abandoned and the mails transferred to the lighter agency of a post-chaise, while numerous others were buried in the snow as far south as St. Albans.
The earlier and later periods of coaching were productive of accidents in equal degrees. Stage-coaches may be said to date, roughly, from 1698, and continued as lumbering, uncomfortable conveyances until competition with the mails began to smarten them up, soon after 1784, when their second period dawned. Stage-coachmen of the first period were well matched with their machines, and not often fit to be trusted with any other cattle than a team of tired plough-horses. Their want of skill generally caused the accidents in those days, and the efficiency of others was affected by the conditions of their employment. The “classic” age had not arrived, and bad roads, ill-made coaches, and poor horses, combined with long hours of driving to render travelling quite dangerous enough, without the highwaymen’s aid. Coachmen drove long distances in those days, and sometimes fell asleep from sheer weariness—a failing which did not conduce to the safety of the passengers. But the old coach-proprietors did not do the obvious thing—make the stages shorter and change the coachman more frequently. No; they contrived a hard, uncomfortable seat for him which rested on the bed of the axletree in such a manner as to shake every bone in his body, and to render repose quite out of the question.
The Louth Mail stopped by the snow
To these clumsy or worn-out fellows succeeded the dashing charioteers of the palmy age of coaching, which we may say came into full being with the year 1800, and lasted for full thirty years. Many broken heads and limbs, and bruises and contusions innumerable, can be laid to the account of these gay sportsmen. Washington Irving has left us a portrait of the typical stage-coachman of this time, in this delightful literary jewel:—
“He cannot be mistaken for one of any other craft. He has commonly a broad full face, curiously mottled with red, as if the blood had been forced by hard feeding into every vessel of the skin; he is swelled into jolly dimensions by frequent potations of malt liquors, and his bulk is still further increased by a multiplicity of coats in which he is buried like a cauliflower, the upper one reaching to his heels. He wears a broad-brimmed, low-crowned hat, a huge roll of coloured handkerchief about his neck, knowingly knotted and tucked in at the bosom, and has in summer-time a large bouquet of flowers in his buttonhole—the present, most probably, of some enamoured country lass. His waistcoat is commonly of some bright colour, striped; and his small-clothes extend far below the knees, to meet a pair of jockey-boots which reach about half-way up his legs.
“All this costume is maintained with much precision; he has a pride in having his clothes of excellent materials, and, notwithstanding the seeming grossness of his appearance, there is still discernible that neatness and propriety of person which is almost inherent in an Englishman. He enjoys great confidence and consideration along the road; has frequent conferences with the village housewives, who look upon him as a man of great trust and dependence, and he seems to have a good understanding with every bright-eyed country lass. The moment he arrives where the horses are to be changed, he throws down the reins with something of an air, and abandons the cattle to the care of the ostler; his duty being merely to drive from one stage to another. When off the box, his hands are thrust into the pockets of his great-coat, and he rolls about the inn-yard with an air of the most absolute lordliness. Here he is generally surrounded by an admiring throng of ostlers, stable-boys, shoe-blacks, and those nameless hangers-on that infest inns and taverns, and run errands, and do all kinds of odd jobs for the privilege of battening on the drippings of the kitchen and the leakings of the tap-room. These all look up to him as an oracle, treasure up his cant phrases, echo his opinions about horses and other topics of jockey-lore, and, above all, endeavour to imitate his air and carriage. Every ragamuffin that has a coat to his back thrusts his hands in the pockets, rolls in his gait, talks slang, and is an embryo coachey.”
But how different the last years of this gorgeous figure! When railways were projected, the coachman laughed at the idea. He thought himself secure on his box-seat, and witnessed the preparations for laying the iron rails with an amused confidence that his horses could run the “tin-kettles” off the road with little trouble. He kept this frame of mind even until the opening of the line that competed with him; and even when it was proved to demonstration that railways could convey passengers at least three times as swiftly as coaches, and at about a quarter of the cost, he generally professed to believe that “it couldn’t last long.” His was the faith that should have moved mountains—to say nothing of blighting locomotives; but it was no use. His old passengers deserted him. They were not proof against the opportunities of saving time and money. Who is? Nor did they come back to him, as he fondly thought they would, half-choked with cinders and smoke. He was speedily run off the road. There were those who liked him well, and, unwilling to see him brought low, made interest with railway companies to secure him a post; but he indignantly refused it when obtained; and, finding a cross-country route to which the railway had not yet penetrated, drove the coachman’s horror—a pair-horse coach—along the by-ways. Gone by now was his lordly importance. He had not even a guard, and frequently was reduced to putting in the horses himself. He grew slovenly, and was maudlin in his drink. “Tips” were seldom bestowed upon him, and when he received an infrequent sixpenny-piece, he was known to burst into tears. The familiar figure of Belisarius begging an obolus is scarce more painful. The last of him was generally in the driving of the omnibus between the railway station and the hotel; a misanthropic figure, consistently disregarded by his passengers, lingering, resolutely old-fashioned in dress, and none too civil, superfluous on the stage.
Entrance to London from Islington, 1809
These long preliminaries over, we may duly start for the North from the General Post Office, coming to Islington by way of Goswell Road. Here, at the “Peacock” or the “Angel,” travellers of a century and a-half ago were one mile from London, or from Hicks’s Hall, which was the same thing. A milestone proclaimed the fact, and its successor, with a different legend, stood until quite recently opposite the Grand Theatre, on Islington Green. Here stood the first toll-gate as you went out of London. Here also was the village pound for strayed horses and cattle. Here again, according to those who do not know anything at all about it, the bailiff’s daughter of Islington might have met her lover; only, unhappily for this Islington, the old ballad refers to quite another Islington, away in Norfolk.
The usual suburban perils awaited wayfarers to Islington at any time during the eighteenth century, and those bound for it from the city were accustomed to wait at the Smithfield end of St. John Street until a number had collected, when they were convoyed outwards by the armed patrol stationed there for that purpose. But the footpads were quite equal to the occasion, and simply waited until those parties dispersed for their several homes, and then, like skilful generals, attacked them in detail. The Islington Vestry were obliged to make a standing offer of £10 to any one who should arrest a robber; but that this failed seems certain, for at a later period we find the inhabitants subscribing a fund for rewards to those who arrested evildoers.
Time has wrought sad havoc with Islington’s once rural aspect, and with its old coaching inns. That grand coaching centre, the “Peacock,” has utterly vanished, and so has the picturesque “Queen’s Head,”—gabled, Elizabethan—wantonly destroyed in 1829; while the “Angel,” pulled down in 1819 and rebuilt, and again rebuilt in 1900, has since retired from business as a public-house, and is now a tea and lunch place, in the hands of a popular firm of caterers. In early days, and well on into the nineteenth century, the Green was really a pleasant spot, with tall elms shading the footpaths, and a very rustic-looking pound for strayed cattle. Near by stood for many years a little hatter’s shop, bearing the legend in large characters, “Old Hats Beavered,” and it is curious to note how, in a long succession of old prints, this shop and its now curiously sounding notice kept their place while all else was changing.
Islington was once a Cockney paradise, and to it retired, as into the country, the good citizens and shopkeepers of London, setting up miniature parks and pleasances of their own. So favourite a practice was this that the witlings of that period, a hundred and fifty years ago, used to publish absurd notices supposed to have been found displayed at the entrances of these haunts. “The New Paradise,” ran one of them, “Gentlemen with Nails in their Boots not Admitted.” Perhaps also “Serpents Warned Off.” At that time, and long before, Islington was resorted to on account of some alleged mineral waters existing here. “Islington,” according to M. Henri Misson, who travelled in England, and wrote a book about us and our country in 1718, “is a large village, half a league from London, where you drink waters that do you neither good nor harm, provided you don’t take too much of them.” This is decidedly a “palpable hit,” and may be commended to those who take medicinal waters in our own time.
“It is not much flock’d to by People of Quality,” he goes on to observe. Here, at least, he is not out of date. People of Quality do not flock to Islington. The medicinal waters are all gone; and that Islington is, even now, not in any great degree a resort of fashion is an incontrovertible fact.
Between this and Highgate, the road leading to what the poets call the “true and tender North” is by no means happy. Any other of the classic highways of England begins better, and however delightful the Holloway Road may have been in the coaching age, it is in these crowded days a very commonplace thoroughfare indeed. The long reaches of mean streets and sordid bye-roads combine with the unutterably bad road surface to render the exit from London anything but pleasurable.
Sir Walter Scott, on his way down to Abbotsford in 1826, calls the Great North Road “the dullest road in the world, though the most convenient,” and the description, minus the convenience, might well stand for its suburban portion to-day. In Sir Walter’s time, however, these first few miles were only just emerging from a condition in which dulness could have had no part. In fact, it may well be supposed that the travellers, who up to that time went by coach to York, well armed, found the journey a thought too lively. Indeed, the Holloway Road, into which they came, from the last outposts of civilisation, was, as it were the ante-chamber into that direful territory of highwaymen and footpads, the veritable Alsatias of Finchley Common and Whetstone. In fact, a few years earlier still, when there were no houses at Holloway at all, and no district known by that name, what is now called the Holloway Road was a lonely track, full of mud and water, through which the coach route ran, infested all the while by the most villainous characters, compared with whom the gay highwayman in ruffles and lace, and mounted on a mettlesome horse, was a knight indeed—a chevalier without fear or reproach. This stretch of road lay then between high banks, and considerably below the level of the surrounding fields. It was a “hollow” road, as such roads are called wherever they exist in the country—the actual, original Hollow Way from which, in the course of time, a whole residential district has obtained its name. Such roads, worn down through the earth by constant traffic, are always very ancient, and though the story of the Holloway Road at a period from a hundred and fifty to eighty years ago was a disgraceful one, the inhabitants of that part can console themselves by the soothing thought that, although it cannot claim the Roman ancestry of the route by Shoreditch, Waltham Cross and Cheshunt, which was the Ermine Way, the road in question probably dates back to the respectable antiquity of mediæval times.
The road has been ascending ever since the General Post Office was left behind, and now we come to the beginning of Highgate Hill, where the old way over the hill-top, and the more recent one, dating from 1813, divide left and right. Here, at the junction of Salisbury Road with Highgate Hill, stands the Whittington Stone, marking the traditional spot where Dick rested on his flight, and heard the bells inviting him to
“Turn again, Whittington,
Thrice Lord Mayor of London.”
It is a pretty story, and one which, let us hope, will never be forgotten or popularly discredited; how the boy, running away from ill-treatment at his master’s house in the city, halted here in his four-miles’ flight, and resting on the slope of Highgate Hill, saw the clustered spires of London and the silvery Thames—it was silvery then—down below, and heard the prophetic message of Bow Bells inviting him to return. If we can believe that he had his favourite cat with him, let us believe with joy, because it goes far to complete the tender story which has always held captive the hearts of the children; and God forbid we should grow the less tender towards the beautiful legends of our forbears as we grow older.
Bow Bells fulfilled their prophecy in full measure and running over, for Dick Whittington was chosen to complete the year of Mayor—Adam Bamme—who died in 1397, and was Mayor on three separate occasions as well; in 1397, 1406, and 1420. He was knighted, of course, and, moreover, he became one of the richest men of his time. Perhaps the most dramatic thing recorded of his prosperous career as Mayor and a member of the Mercers’ Company, is that splendid entertainment which he gave to Henry the Fifth and his Queen at Guildhall in his last year of office, when he threw into the fire bonds equal to £60,000 of our money, due to him from the king—a generous, nay, a princely gift.
But he was not “Lord” Mayor. The tradition is wrong in that respect. There were “Mayors,” but no “Lord Mayor” until 1486.
Who was Richard Whittington? We know him well in his later career as a Mercer, and as a pious and patriotic citizen; but whence came he? Was he the poor and friendless lad of legend? Well, not quite that. Poor, perhaps, because he was the youngest of three brothers; but not friendless, for his family was of no mean descent. His father, Sir William Whittington, had an estate on which he lived, at Pauntley, in Gloucestershire, and other possessions of the family were at Sollers Hope, Herefordshire. Misfortunes fell upon Sir William, who seems to have died not long after Dick was born; but the family had friends in the FitzWarrens, of whom one, Sir John, was a prominent Mercer in London. Dick’s brothers had, as elder brothers have nowadays, the best chances, as it seemed, and remained in the country, enjoying the family property, or following rural employments. Dick we may readily picture as being sent to FitzWarren, to learn a trade. The great man probably took him for old acquaintance’ sake, and, having received the lad of thirteen, and turned him over to one of his many underlings, promptly forgot him. It is a way with the great, not yet obsolete. We may with a good conscience reject that part of the legend which tells how Dick was found, an obscure waif and stray, on FitzWarren’s doorstep, and taken, in compassion, to serve as a scullion. The pantomimes always insist on this, and on the ferocious cook’s ill-treatment of him; but pantomime librettists have many sins to answer for.
No; Dick was an apprentice, a poor one, and doubtless taken without a premium; but not scullion. There can be little doubt that the country lad, thus thrown into the midst of many other apprentices in FitzWarren’s house, must have been an object of sport. They would taunt him with his country ways, and, superior in their clothes of London cut, ridicule, with the cruel satire of boys, his homely duds. Possibly his flight had some such origin as this.
But it is chiefly on the legend of the cat that more or less learned antiquaries have so savagely fallen, with intent to explain it away. The cat, they assure us, was a fable, and they go on to say that it was from coal vessels called “cats,” in which Whittington embarked his money, that the story grew. Another school of commentators, eager to reduce the pretty tale to commonplace, tell us that it originated in the old French word for a purchase, achat. To what shifts will they not proceed in this hunt for an ignoble realism! Whittington is not known to have engaged in the ownership of colliers, or in the carrying of coal. A Mercer has no commerce with such things. Then, that derivation from the French does smell of the lamp, does it not?
Now for the truth of his embarking his favourite cat as a venture, to be sold at a profit in some foreign port. The story, regarded with a knowledge of those times, is by no means an improbable one. Indeed, to go further, it is quite likely. Cats were in that era comparatively rare. They had a high value at home; were even more valuable in Europe, and in the darkly-known countries on the confines of the known world—a small world, too, before the discovery of America—they were almost priceless.
Many childish searchings of heart have arisen over Dick’s parting with his cat for love of gain. Did Dick, like the Arab who sold his steed, repent with tears? Perhaps Dick was the happy possessor of two cats, and his favourite was a “tom.” If the other was a she-cat, and as prolific as are our own, no doubt Dick would have been glad to have got rid of her; except that the progeny themselves were marketable. To this, then, we are reduced: that Dick Whittington as a boy bred cats for exportation, and that his black-and-white Tom, as the progenitor of them all, was the founder of his fortunes. The legend tells us of only one cat, which, when the vessel was driven out of her course to the coast of Barbary, was sold for immense riches of gold and precious stones to the Sultan, whose palace was infested with mice. That may do for the pantomimes; but, unhappily, the ships that were so unfortunate in those times as to be driven on those shores were plundered and their crews slain. It was cheaper than buying.
But whatever the details, it is certain that Whittington owed his first successes to his cat. Several things, despite all destructive criticism, point to the essential truth of the popular story. Firstly, original portraits, painted from the life, testify to it by showing Whittington’s hand laid caressingly on a black and white cat. Then, Whittington was the rebuilder of the old New Gate, and his effigy, with a cat at his feet, stood in one of its niches until the building was pulled down hundreds of years afterwards. Finally, a very remarkable confirmation of the story came from Gloucester in 1862, when, on a house occupied by the Whittington family until 1460 being repaired, the fragment of a carved chimney-piece of that century was discovered, bearing the sculpture of a boy carrying a cat in his arms. It may reasonably be claimed that these evidences, together with the popular belief in the story, which can be traced back almost to Whittington’s own day, confound unbelievers.
The present Whittington Stone is the degenerate and highly unornamental descendant of quite a number of vanished memorials to the great Lord Mayor which have occupied this spot since his day. It is not by any means a romantic spot to the sight nowadays, but for those who can bring romance with them in their own minds, it matters little that the heights just here are crowned with suburban villa roads, that a public-house—the “Whittington Stone Tavern”—stands by, or that the whole neighbourhood reeks vulgarity. The present stone is dated 1821, and succeeded one which had disappeared shortly before, itself the successor in 1795 of a cross. The existing inscription was recut, and railings enclosing the stone put up in 1869; a public-house gas-lamp now crowning and desecrating the whole.