6 THE COACHING ERA 



to boast of, and, as late as 1736, Lord Hervey writing 

 from Kensington declared: "The road between this 

 place and London is grown so infamously bad that we 

 live here in the same solitude as we would do if cast on 

 a rock in the middle of the ocean; and all the Londoners 

 tell us that there is between them and us an impassable 

 gulf of mud." 



The cross-country roads in the provinces were called 

 roads out of courtesy, for in point of fact they were 

 little more than rough tracks across country made by the 

 carriers with their strings of pack-horses. These pack- 

 horses, besides being the acknowledged conveyance for 

 merchandise and other heavy goods, also carried occa- 

 sional letters, packages, and sometimes travellers, from 

 one place to another. 



Smollett, whose novel, Roderick Random, is largely 

 autobiographical, gives an account of such a journey: 

 "I determined therefore to set out with the carriers 

 who transplant goods from one place to another on 

 horseback; and this scheme I accordingly put into 

 execution, on the first day of November 1739, sitting 

 upon a pack-saddle between two blankets, one of which 

 contained my goods in a knapsack. But by the time 

 we arrived at Newcastle-on-Tyne, I was so fatigued 

 with the tediousness of the carriage, and benumbed with 

 the cold of the weather, that I resolved to travel the rest 

 of the journey on foot, rather than proceed in such a 

 disagreeable manner." 



Walter Rippon made the first hollow turning coach 

 for Queen Elizabeth, but his invention did not advance 



