4 THE DOVER ROAD 



Strood ; or served the villages between London and 

 Gravesend. Indeed, at this period, we find the crack 

 coaches, the long-distance mails, starting from London 

 city, leaving to the historic inns of Southwark only 

 the goods- wagons, the short-stages, and the carriers '- 

 carts. In 1837, also, you could vary the order of 

 your going to Dover by taking boat from London 

 to Gravesend, Whitstable, or Heme Bay, and at any 

 of those places waiting for the coach. The voyage 

 to Heme Bay took six hours, and the coach journey 

 from thence to Dover occupied another four, the whole 

 costing but ten shillings ; which, considering that you 

 could get horribly sea-sick in the six hours between 

 London and Heme Bay, and had four hours of jolting 

 in which to recover, w as decidedly cheap, and not to be 

 matched nowadays. 



The traveller of this time would probably select 

 the " Express " from the " Golden Cross," because 

 this was a convenient and central starting-point from 

 which that excellent coach started at an hour when 

 the day was well-aired. The coachman of that time 

 was the ultimate product of the coaching age, and we 

 who travel by train do not see anything like him. 

 He owed something to heredity, for in those days son 

 succeeded to father in all kinds of trades and profes- 

 sions much more frequently than now ; for the rest 

 of his somewhat alarming appearance he was indebted 

 partly to the rigours of the weather and partly to the 

 rum-and-milk for which he called at every tavern 

 where the coach stopped — and at a good many where 

 it had no business to stop at all. As a result of these 

 several causes, he generally had cheeks like pulpit 

 cushions, puffy, and of an apoplectic hue, and a plum- 

 coloured nose with red spots on it ; he was, in fact, 

 what Shakespeare would call a " purple-hued malt- 

 worm," He shaved scrupulously. A rugged beaver 

 hat with a curly brim and a coat of many capes would 

 have identified him as a coachman, even if the evidence 

 of his face had failed, and his talk, which consisted of 



