230 DRIVING 



took the passengers to the City. The coach was timed five 

 hours to the Elephant. It returned from the Golden Cross at 

 two, and reached Brighton at 7.15. A heavy family coach, 

 called the Regent, left both ends at ten, and was supposed 

 to do the journey in six hours, but it was really six hours 

 and a half. Goodman had also the four o'clock Times, which 

 left both ends at four and was due in London and Brighton at 

 9.15. He generally drove this coach himself, and as he had a 

 farm six or seven miles out of Brighton on the roadside, he had 

 a man who often took it out of and brought it into Brighton, 

 Goodman getting down and sleeping at his farm. There was 

 a very peculiar old fellow who drove the Regent. He was a 

 very slow safe old coachman, who would not have liked to 

 drive any faster than he did. In 1833, my mother not being 

 very well, my father took a house at Brighton Western House, 

 which is next to the easternmost house of Brunswick Ter- 

 race. He was then in the House of Commons, and had to 

 go up and down between London and Brighton often. Being a 

 very fine coachman very powerful, and with hands as fine on a 

 horse's mouth as a woman's he could drive any horses ; indeed 

 I have known him drive horses that went pleasantly and without 

 pulling with him, when it had been declared that no man could 

 hold them. He was in the habit of driving many of the coaches 

 on the Oxford, Bath, Portsmouth, and Southampton roads, and 

 was well known as a first-rate artist,' Goodman a surly cross- 

 grained fellow would not let him drive. My father, vexed at 

 the uncourteous treatment he had received, went to Alex- 

 ander's, a large horse and coach proprietor in the Borough. 

 In the lapse of time I have lost the name of his large stables, 

 but well do I remember that whilst business was being dis- 

 cussed I used to wait in the coffee-room. Coffee ! save the 

 mark no whiff of the fragrant berry ever sweetened that den. 

 Dog's-nose, gin, the smell of stale bad tobacco smoke, sand, 

 sawdust, and spittoons offended the nose and eyes ! All coffee- 

 rooms all over England had boxes fancy an old-fashioned 

 church pew, only higher, say six feet high, a brass rod above it, 



