252 THE COACHING ERA 



They were first-class whips but there their accomplish- 

 ments ended, and they were unfit for any other calling. 



It was the loss of prestige that embittered them; they 

 could not forget what important personages they had 

 been. They resented patronage, and repelled intimacy 

 with those who had been formerly subservient to them, 

 and were so ready to imagine an affront that even those 

 anxious to help them found it difl[icult to do so. 



Coachmen who had saved money, or successfully 

 courted one of the landladies who had admired them in 

 the heyday of their existence, set up public-houses. A 

 few were provided for by wealthy patrons who had 

 learnt to tool a coach under their able tuition; some 

 obtained places in stables; others were forced to drive 

 buses for a livelihood. Some whose pride could not 

 brook their altered circumstances and the loss of every- 

 thing that made life worth living, committed suicide 

 rather than submit to the degradation which seemed 

 inevitable. The tragedy of their lives lay in the fa6l 

 that the railway shattered the coachmen's world, 

 leaving them isolated figures of an obsolete past that 

 never under any circumstances could be reconstru6led. 



The guards fared better than their colleagues, for 

 they were the servants of the Post Office, and though 

 the scene of their operations shifted from coach to 

 railway, they quickly adapted themselves to the new 

 order of things. If anything they were a little too 

 zealous; one coach guard lost his life on becoming a 

 railway guard, owing to a fixed idea that during the 

 journey the third-class passengers would climb out of 



