io6 THE EXETER ROAD 



beef of the dinners ; or perceive through the old- 

 fashioned window -frames the lordly posting parties, 

 detained here by stress of weather, making the best 

 of it by drinking of the old port or Vjrown sherry 

 which the cellars of every self-respecting coaching 

 inn could then produce. Not that these were the 

 only travellers familiar to the roadside village in 

 those days. Not every one who fared from London 

 to Exeter could afford the luxuries of the mail or 

 stage coach, or of the good cheer and the lavender- 

 scented beds just glimpsed. For the poor traveller 

 there were the lumbering so - called ' Fly-vans ' of 

 Russell and Co., which jogged along at the average 

 pace of three miles ^ an hour — the pace decreed by 

 Scotland Yard for the modern policeman. The poor 

 folk who travelled thus might perhaps have walked 

 with greater advantage, ' save for the dignity of the 

 thing,' as the Irishman said when the floor of his cab 

 fell out and he was obliged to run along with the 

 bottomless vehicle. Certainly they paid more for the 

 misery of being conveyed thus than the railway 

 traveller does nowadays for comfort at thirty to fifty 

 miles an hour. Numbers did walk, including the 

 soldiers and the sailors going to rejoin their regiments 

 or their ships, who appear frequently in the roadside 

 sketches of that period l^y Rowlandson and others. 

 The poor travellers probably rode because of their — 

 luQ-o-ao-e I was about to write, let us more correctlv 

 say bundles. 



When they arrived at a village at nightfall, they 



^ Waggons travelling at the I'ate of not moix' tlian four miles an 

 hour were exempt from excise duty. 



