BRITISH SPORT PAST AND PRESENT 



hundred miles, at two shillings per mile, postboys, turnpikes, 

 etc., £20, This will never do. Have you no coach that 

 does not carry luggage on the top ? " " Oh yes, sir," replies 

 the waiter, " we shall have one to-night that is not allowed 

 to carry a band-box on the roof." ^ " That 's the coach for 

 me ; pray what do you call it ? " " The Quicksilver mail, 

 sir ; one of the best out of London — Jack White and Tom 

 Brown, picked coachmen, over this ground — Jack White 

 down to-night." " Guarded and lighted ? " " Both, sir ; 

 blunderbuss and pistols in the sword-case ; ' a lamp each side 

 the coach, and one under the foot-board — see to pick up a pin 

 the darkest night of the year." " Very fast ? " " Oh no, 

 sir, just keeps time, and that 's all.'' " That 's the coach for me, 

 then," repeats our hero ; " and I am sure I shall feel at my 

 ease in it. I suppose it is what used to be called the Old 

 Mercury." 



' Unfortunately, the Devonport (commonly called the 

 Quicksilver) mail is half a mile in the hour faster than most in 

 England, and is, indeed, one of the miracles of the road. Let 

 us, then, picture to ourselves our anti-reformer snugly seated 

 in this mail, on a pitch-dark night in November. It is true 

 she has no luggage on the roof, nor much to incommode her 

 elsewhere ; but she is a mile in the hour faster than the Comet, 

 at least three miles quicker than the Regulator ; and she 



1 The conveyance of ' trunks, parcels, and other packaj^es' on tlie roof of a mail-coach 

 was prohibited in the Postmaster-General's circular to mail contractors of 29th June 

 1807. As the mails increased it became impossible to enforce this regulation, and the 

 bags were carried wherever they could be stowed. 'The Druid' says of the Edinburgh 

 mail-coach : ' The heaviest night as regards correspondence was when the American mail 

 had come in. On those occasions the bags have been known to weigh above l(i cwt. 

 They were contained in sacks seven feet long and were laid in three tiers across the top, 

 so high that no guard unless he were a Chang in stature could look over them . . . and 

 the waist (the seat behind the coachman) and the hind boot were filled as well.' 



^ It must be remembered that the old gentleman speaks by the light of his knowledge 

 of nearly a century earlier, when highway robbery was very common, and it was not usual 

 for coaches to run at night. At the period to which Nimrod refers highwaymen had not 

 entirely disappeared from the roads (William Rea was hanged for this offence, 4th July 

 1828), and not every stage-coach carried a guard. Mail-coaches, all of which carried 

 guards, were, of course, unknown to Nimrod's old gentleman. 



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