Identifier: stagecoachmailin01harp (find matches)
Title: Stage-coach and mail in days of yore : a picturesque history of the coaching age
Year: 1903 (1900s)
Authors: Harper, Charles G. (Charles George), 1863-1943
Subjects: Horses Coaching (Transportation) -- History
Publisher: London : Chapman & Hall, limited
Contributing Library: Tufts University
Digitizing Sponsor: Tufts University and the National Science Foundation

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id not come instantly. lie was, according to the admiring testimonyof the time, a fixture on the box—notliing couldthrow him off. K. scientific punisher of refractoryhorses, too; accompanying the corrective disciplineof the whip with much grim humour. Passingthrough Buntingford one day, the chestnut nearleader attemi)ted to bolt into a public-house. Ididnt know your friends lived tJiere^ said Walton. Come, come, now you are got into this coach youmust give up low company, and two slashing-strokes of the whip followed. Walton, it was said,had the temper of an emperor and a tongue asfluent and free as that of a bargee. The story wastold that he refused to pull up for a passengerAvho had lost his hat, and that the passenger there-upon pushed AValtons off, compelling him to halt;but that tale Avas eitluu* untrue or the passengerluiaccpiainted with AValton. It was not likely thatany one who knew him Avould have taken such aliberty. We are not told what became of thatimjpulsive passenger.
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THE LATER COACHMEN 245 The characteristics of coachmen had everyoj)i)oi*^^^i^i^y c>f heing well impressed uj^on box-seatpassengers down the long monotonous miles, andtheir j^^culiarities have accordingly been wellpreserved in travellers recollections. One choicespirit, who drove the Leeds Union from the George and Blue Boar in Ilolhorn to EatonSocon, let his leaders down in Biggleswade street,so that they broke their knees. He observed thatthey had made a terrible fore paw, but whetherthat was conscious or unconscious humour remainsuncertain. A sharp distinction was drawn between Londonand provincial coachmen, and l)etween coachmenon main roads and those on by-Avays. Yorkshireby-roads, in particular, were regarded Ijy coachingcritics, from Nimrod downwards, with contempt,alike for their coaches and coachmen. Thus, onetells in 1830 of a dirty coach in Yorkshire, drawnby a team of tike horses known to the coach-man by the names of Rumblcguts and Bumblekite,Staggering Bob and Davey. O

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