148 COACHING DAYS AND COACHING WAYS 



9.30 P.M. In the way of coaching this record of the 

 Exeter Road was hardly if ever beaten ; and as for the 

 coachmen who performed this and kindred feats of 

 different character, but all of the highest style of art, I 

 cannot more appropriately round the Exeter Road's 

 story than by solemnly, and in the place of honour, 

 inscribing their great names. First then let mention be 

 made of the incomparable Charles Ward, who drove 

 the Telegraph out of London ; and after him, let there 

 be ranged in no narrow spirit of rivalry, but in the order 

 which chance and my note-book dictates, the following 

 masters of their art : Jack Moody, who worked on the 

 Exeter Mail, an out and outer, whose fine performances 

 on the road were interrupted at last by ill health, whose 

 retirement was the signal for general mourning, and 

 whose appearance and execution on the box were as 

 superior to other coachmen as night is to day ; '•' Pop," 

 a coachman on the Light Salisbury, whose father hunted 

 the Vyne Hounds ; Mountain Shaw, the respectable, 

 the scientific, who drove Monk's Basingstoke coach to 

 London one day and down the next ; Jackman of the 

 Old Salisbury, who was a great favourite with his 

 master, whose cattle were always of unequalled size and 

 condition and than whom no one in England who sat 

 on a box-seat better understood the art of saving horses 

 under heavy work. 



