210 DRIVING CLUB 



on the Bath and Oxford roads. It was a little before 

 this time that driving four-in-hand became a fashionable 

 amusement among the more wealthy residents of the 

 latter city and university. Studying the rudiments of 

 the art in a school where every facility was rendered for 

 acquiring proficiency, and associating with some of its 

 most resjDectable professors, they soon became connoisseurs, 

 as well as amateurs, and, increasing in numbers, finally 

 resolved themselves into a club or institution, called the 

 B.D.C., for Bedford Driving Club, but lately extinct; 

 after which, by a handsome donation of a hundred 

 guineas, they founded another B.D.C., or Benevolent 

 Driving Club, which has also been defunct some little 

 time. Both tended verv much to the advantao^e, and 

 also to the resi^ectability, of their more humble tutors in 

 the art, and their successors. 



About this time, and out of this institution, sprang up 

 another, termed the " Bang Up," in accordance with the 

 slang then much in vogue, and it reckoned among its 

 numbers some of the most distinguished and wealthy 

 members of the aristocracy of the day. Cavendish 

 Square was their place of rendezvous ; and here on a 

 Sunday afternoon might be seen assembled from twenty 

 to thirty of the most splendid turns-out that money coidd 

 buy or judgment could select. 



After some little time spent in putting to and adjusting 

 bearing-reins, coupling-reins, &c., they would mount and 

 drive in procession into and round Hyde Park, eliciting 

 the surprise and admiration of the gaping multitude, 

 which consisted of all classes and both sexes, some of 

 whom passed judgment ui^on the merits of the different 



