238 DRIVING. 



our course, and got it more abeam, and the wind subsided a 

 little. I remember hearing that on that morning some elm- 

 trees were blown across the London Road between Brighton 

 and Preston, and that all the earlier coaches had to go up a very 

 awkward narrow road on to the Down, and to come down 

 another equally awkward one into the road beyond Patcham. 

 There was an old fire-eating Irish major, some relation to an old 

 Dowager Duchess who lived a good deal at Brighton. I re- 

 member his hat and wig well beautiful silky brown curly hair 

 it was he lost them both off the coach on top of the Downs 

 going to London that day. What was his name ? O'Grady, I 

 fancy. 



After the Brighton Railway had run all the coaches off the 

 road, and the Great Western Railway had done the same for 

 the Bath and Bristol coaches, James Adlam, who for years had 

 driven the Bath York House from London to Marlborough alter- 

 nate days there and back, set up a four-horse coach on the long 

 road to Brighton. Though I travelled by it a few times I forget 

 the exact route he went. He was not a good coachman, but was 

 the first that ever let me drive a public coach. When I was 

 fifteen years of age and at Eton I had had hold of my father's 

 horses several times for two or three miles at a time, so that I 

 knew something about it, and was as handy with my whip then 

 as any old coachman, and could both catch my thong or hit 

 either leader without any difficulty. Jem Adlam did not get 

 on well, which was his own fault. When people got sick of him 

 and he gave up, George Clark started his coach and called 

 it the Age. An ugly coach, very long, no perch, nut-cracker 

 springs in front, and mail-coach springs behind ; not a coach 

 to my mind, but one of the best to carry a load I ever sat on. 

 Clark was very short of money, and so was I, but I managed 

 to find him three-fourths of the horses. We had no break 

 on our coach ; loaded tremendously : Monday, Wednesday, 

 and Friday from Brighton ; Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday 

 from London. Very long stages, some of them thirteen miles. 

 Very weak, bad horses. It was splendid practice. Down some 



