THE LATER COACHMEN 235 



grandfathers as the " flash men," who, at the 

 extremity of ill-assumed gentility, were prohahly 

 more objectionable than the rough-and-ready old 

 fellows of an earlier generation. The flash coach- 

 man flourished very rankly indeed at Birmingham, 

 Manchester, Glasgow, Liverpool, Leeds, and other 

 great commercial centres. He always dressed 

 in the extreme of fashion, and perhaps a little in 

 advance of it. His silken stock was swathed 

 higher up his neck, his gold (or gilded) scarf-pin 

 was bigger, his waistcoat had a more alarming 

 pattern, his hat was more curly in the brim than 

 others, and in his conversation and manners he 

 dotted the " i's " and crossed the " t's " of his 

 betters. He was, in fact, an unconscious carica- 

 ture of those among the upper classes who took 

 an interest in the road, and Avas a very loud, 

 insuft'erable and ofl'ensive person, who, it was said, 

 " had a missus at both ends," smoked a dozen real 

 Havanahs in a hundred miles, and hardly thanked 

 you for half a crown. Such men imposed upon 

 many of the good commercial folks of those 

 trading towns Avho were foolish enough and 

 inexperienced enough to take cigar-smoking for 

 superiority and overdressed insolence for the hall- 

 mark of gentility ; and these fellows became, in 

 consequence, the curse of the roads. Borrow has, 

 in his Romany Bye, a very vigorous chapter on 

 their kind, but errs in so far as he seems to 

 consider that they, and they only, formed the 

 "stage-coachmen of England." 



" The stage-coachmen of England, at the time 



