Coaching. One of the most remarkable circumstances in connection with this subject is the comparatively short period in which its history is comprised. It might very reasonably have been thought that the exigencies of commerce, no less than those of private requirements, would, even in the earliest times, have demanded a system of communication as speedy as possible, and that some steps would have been taken to secure the desired end. Such, however, scarcely appears to have been the case; and merchants and squires contented themselves with whatever facilities for travel were afforded by the stage-wagon, a cumbrous vehicle drawn at a walk by six, eight, or more horses. Passing over all earlier attempts to organise road traffic, we may come to the year 1659, when the first stage-coach—that from Coventry—was started. Its pace was probably not faster than that of the Oxford coach, which went from London to Oxford in two days, at about 3 miles an hour, or that of the vehicles which occupied two days and a half in compassing the distance between London and Dover. In 1700 a week was required to go from London to York; and two days from London to Salisbury. The first mail-coach was not put on the road until 1784, when Mr John Palmer, manager of the Bath theatre, and M.P. for Bath, overcame strenuous opposition, and induced Mr Pitt to supersede Allen's system of postboys, whose contract rate of speed was 5 miles an hour, by his (Palmer's) plan of carrying the mails by mail-coach. The first experiment was made on the 8th of August 1784, on which day Mr Palmer entered government service as comptroller-general of the Post-office. A coach left London at 8 A.M. and reached Bristol at eleven at night. The other coach left Bristol at four in the afternoon, arriving in London at eight the next morning, the up journey thus taking sixteen hours, or two hours longer than the down journey. The scheme appears to have worked so well from the beginning, that the municipal authorities of the more important towns soon petitioned for the adoption of Mr Palmer's plan in their districts, and in nearly every instance the request was complied with. It was part of the new scheme that the mails should be timed at each stage, so that they might all reach London at about the same hour; and that the outgoing mail-coaches should start at the same time from the General Post-office. At the outset the regulation pace was 6 miles an hour; but in course of time this was increased until the coaches were rated at 10 miles per hour.
This acceleration, however, was due to causes other than the judgment and enterprise of Mr Palmer, the skill of coachmen and coach-builders, and the employment of better horses. At the period above mentioned the bad state of the roads precluded quick travelling, and although we find that roads were the subjects of legislation as early as 1346, it was not till the days of Macadam and Telford that road-travelling was, so to speak, revolutionised. The former returned to Ayrshire from America in the year 1783, and after studying road-making as a science while one of the road commissioners in Scotland, came south to Bristol in 1816, became surveyor in that district, and was consulted as to the making of other roads in all parts of England. As soon as Macadam's plans were carried into effect, good roads took the place of bad ones; quick travelling commenced, and paved the way for the palmy days of coaching, until, in 1836, there were fifty-four mail-coaches in England, thirty in Ireland, and ten in Scotland. Meantime the stage-coaches had grown in number, travelled at a high rate of speed, and necessitated the employment of a vast amount of capital. Among the best-known London proprietors were Chaplin,
Horne, Sherman, Nelson, and Mountain; the two first named having the judgment to discern that the railways would eventually drive coaches off the road, threw in their lot with the London and Birmingham Railway. It was not till after George IV. came to the throne that coaching reached the zenith of its fame in respect of organisation, pace, appointments, and one may, perhaps, say coachmanship as well. The 'palmy days,' concerning which so much has been written, began about 1820, and coaching was possibly at its most perfect pitch about 1836. For about four years it enjoyed this repute, and then the downward journey, far more rapid than the upward one, began; one by one coaches were taken off; coaching inns became roadside public-houses; coachmen and guards found other occupations, or migrated to the workhouse; stables were emptied, and admiration for coaching gave way to appreciation of railroad-travelling.
Of amateur coachmen and coachmanship in the last century comparatively little is known; but, when good roads were the rule instead of the exception, 'gentleman coaching' became a fashionable amusement. Mr John Warde, the famous master of foxhounds, was a renowned whip, to whom were due the thanks of the old coachmen for having originated the idea of placing springs under the coach-box. The name of Peyton has ever been connected with the annals of the road; the Messrs Walker, Sir St Vincent Cotton, the Marquis of Worcester, Mr Henry Villebois, Mr Maxse, Mr Jerningham, Mr Sackville Gwynne, Sir Bellingham Graham, Mr Stevenson, Hon. Fitzroy Stanhope, Hon. T. Kenyon, Colonel Sibthorpe, and Mr C. Buxton are among the number of those who patronised the road by every means in their power. Others, scarcely less enthusiastic, succeeded them, until there were no road-coaches to be driven. So far as London is concerned, the link between the past and present was broken in the year 1858, when the Brighton 'Age,' under the management of Clarke, assisted by the Duke of Beaufort and Sir George Wombwell, was given up; and for eight years there was no road-coach running out of London. But the love for the road was only slumbering, it was not dead; and it was on the Brighton road that the first step was taken in the coaching revival in 1866. In that year Captain Haworth, Captain Lawrie, and a few others, started the 'Old Times' to Brighton. At the end of the season the confederacy was broken up, and in 1867 the Duke of Beaufort, Mr Chandos Pole, and Mr B. J. Angel took the road, running a coach each way daily. Between then and the present time coaches have been started to Sevenoaks, Tunbridge Wells, Virginia Water, Dorking, Sunbury, High Wycombe, Westerham, Reigate, Watford, Windsor, Rochester, Guildford, Portsmouth, Maidenhead, &c. Some only lasted a short time, and since the revival began there have been many changes in routes and proprietors. Thus in 1884 only four coaches were left, the Brighton road being vacant; whilst in 1888 there were eight coaches running out of London, and three of them on the Brighton road. From time to time coaches have also been put on in the provinces.
The year 1877 was a somewhat memorable one in the annals of modern coaching, as on 4th November the 'Old Times' was put on to St Albans, and has run every 'lawful day' since without a break, though not always on the same route. In 1888 it was put upon the Brighton road, and on the 11th July James Selby (ob. Dec. 1888), its coachman since 1877, drove from Piccadilly to Brighton and back in seven hours fifty minutes, the outward journey being accomplished in three hours fifty minutes and ten seconds. This performance, though a good one, is not a 'record,' as in 1837 Israel Alexander, a pro- fessional on the Brighton road, drove down with the Queen's first speech in three hours forty minutes.
The meets of the Four-in-hand Driving Club and the Coaching Club are justly regarded as among the sights of the season. The former is the more exclusive as well as the elder, having been established in 1856, chiefly at the suggestion of Mr W. Morratt. The club could not entertain one quarter of the applications for membership, so in 1870 the Coaching Club was established, and has been gradually increasing in size. For the first driving club of which we have any account, we must go back to the year 1807, the date of the establishment of the Bensington Driving Club—the B.D.C. it was generally known as—which was limited to twenty-five members. For the first sixteen years of the club's existence its members used to drive down two days in the season to Bensington, near Wallingford, in Oxfordshire, and twice to Bedford; but in 1823 the Bensington gatherings were given up. A second club was founded in 1808 by Mr Charles Buxton. The new association was called the Four-horse Club; but it was sometimes, though wrongly, designated as the Whip Club, and the Four-in-hand Club. The Four-horse Club was broken up in 1820, was revived in 1822, but became extinct altogether about 1829. The B.D.C. was then the only body of the kind until 1838, when Lord Chesterfield established the Richmond Driving Club, the members of which, after meeting at Chesterfield House, drove to Richmond for dinner. This club, however, came to an end after nine or ten years; and in 1852 the B.D.C. was broken up. From that time there was no driving club until the present Four-in-hand Driving Club was founded as already mentioned. See Driving, by the Duke of Beaufort (Badminton series, 1888).