Edinburgh. On the Queensferry Road the two men were joined by their accomplice, the outside passenger. They left the gig and took a post chaise for Edinburgh. They discharged the chaise before entering the city and gave the post-boy £3.’ (Bell's Life, 2nd January 1825).

Great improvements in all matters connected with coaching were made during the first two decades of the nineteenth century: these were due to the rage for driving that prevailed about this time. The King was deeply interested in coaching, was himself no mean whip, and he set the fashion. It did not last very long. Nimrod, writing in 1835, remarks that about 1825 ‘thirty to forty four-in-hand equipages were constantly to be seen about town: one is stared at now.’

The driving clubs held ‘meets’ in George the Third's time much as they do at present, but the vehicles used were ‘barouche landaus,’ and the drive taken was much longer than that in vogue to-day. Bedfont beyond Hounslow, and Windsor were favourite places whither the coaches—‘barouche landaus’—drove in procession to dine. Very particular attention was paid to dress. This was the costume in which members of the Whip Club, founded in 1808 as a rival to the Benson, mounted their boxes on 6th June 1808, in Park Lane, to drive to Harrow:—

‘A light, drab-colour cloth coat made full, single breast with three tier of pockets, the skirt reaching to the ancles; a mother of pearl button the size of a crown piece; waistcoat blue and yellow stripe, each stripe an inch in depth; small clothes corded silk plush made to button over the calf of the leg, with sixteen strings and rosettes to each knee. The boots very short and finished with very broad straps which hang over the tops and down to the ancle. A hat three inches and a half deep in the crown only, and the same depth in the brim exactly. Each wore a large bouquet at the breast, thus resembling the coachmen of our nobility who, on His Majesty's birthday, appear in that respect so peculiarly distinguished.’[12]

Grimaldi the clown, then at the zenith of his fame, burlesqued this get-up so mercilessly that a less conspicuous garb was adopted.

The fifteen barouche landaus which turned out on this occasion, driven by ‘men of known skill in the science of charioteering,’ were well calculated to set off the somewhat conspicuous attire of the members: they were ‘Yellow-bodied carriages with whip springs and dickey boxes; cattle of a bright bay colour with silver plate ornaments on the harness and rosettes to the ears.’

The meets of the driving clubs appear to have roused a spirit of ribaldry in unregenerate youth. One day in March 1809 a young Etonian made his appearance in a low phaeton with a four-in-hand of donkeys, with which he brought up the rear of the procession as it drove round Grosvenor and Berkeley Squares.

The Driving Club was the Benson, which had been founded in 1807. Sir Henry Peyton was the last survivor of the ‘noble, honourable, and respectable’ drivers who composed it. Thackeray described him in the last of his papers on The Four Georges as he appeared driving the ‘one solitary four-in-hand’ to be seen in the London parks. He was then (1851) very old, and attracted attention as much by his dress, which was of the fashion of 1825, as by his then unique turn-out.

The Benson Club came to an end in 1853. The Whip Club, otherwise the Four Horse Club, came to an end in 1838. The Defiance Club, for members who had been ‘lately permitted to retire’ from the other two, was projected in 1809, but it does not appear to have come to anything. The Richmond Drag Club was founded in 1838, but it did not survive for many years; the members to the number of fifteen or sixteen used to meet at Lord Chesterfield's house. These were the principal clubs.

Some of the amateur whips of a century ago were addicted to coach matches. Here is the account of such a race from the Sporting Magazine of 1802:—

‘Mail Coach Match.—On Thursday, May 20th, the London Mail, horsed by Mr. Laud, of the New London Inn, Exeter, with four beautiful grey horses, and driven by Mr. Cave Browne, of the Inniskilling Dragoons, started (at the sound of the bugle) from St. Sydwell's for a bet of Five Hundred Guineas against the Plymouth Mail, horsed by Mr. Phillipps, of the Hotel, with four capital blacks, and driven by Mr. Chichester, of Arlington House, which got the mail first to the Post Office in Honiton. The bet was won easy by Mr. Browne. A very great concourse of people assembled on this occasion.’

In 1811 Mr. George Seward undertook to drive a four-in-hand fifteen miles in fifty minutes. He selected the road from Hyde Park Corner to Staines, and started at six in the morning. He failed to accomplish his undertaking, but only by three minutes twenty seconds.

There was more originality about the competition arranged in May 1805 between Mr. Charles Buxton, inventor of the bit known by his name and one of the founders of the Whip Club, and a horse-dealer:—

‘One of our most celebrated whips Charles Buxton, Esq., has concluded a bet of 500 Guineas with Mr. Thomas Hall, the dealer in horses. The object of the wager is to decide which of the two is the best driver of four unruly horses. The wager is to be decided by two friends of the parties, who are to pick out eight horses from Spencer's, Marsden's, and White's. Lords Barrymore and Cranley are chosen as the umpires. The horses selected are only to be those which have not been broken in. The friend of each charioteer is to pick the horses alternately until the number agreed on is selected. The parties are then to mount the box and proceed to decide the wager. The bettings already are said to be considerable. Neither the scene of action nor the day when the contest is to take place are yet determined on. Mr. Buxton is said to be so certain of success that he has offered to double the bet.’

Though the law of 1820 made racing a criminal offence, the practice was one which could not be wholly put down, and on May-day the law was set at naught by popular consent, rival coaches on that day racing one another without disguise: the May-day race became an institution of the road, and seems to have been winked at by the authorities. Some wonderful records were made in these contests on the macadam. Thus, on 1st May 1830, the Independent Tally Ho ran from London to Birmingham, 109 miles, in 7 hours 39 minutes. It was not rare for a coach to perform its journey at a rate of fifteen miles an hour on May-day. We may compare this with the time made in the Leicester-Nottingham race of 1808 mentioned on page 17.

It is seventy years since the carriage of the mails was transferred from coach to railway train, and there are yet living men who can remember the last journeys of the mail-coaches, some carrying little flags at half-mast, some displaying a miniature coffin, emblematic of the death of a great institution. Yet the mail-coach survived until a much later date in some districts, where the line was slow to penetrate. Mr. S. A. Kinglake, in Baily's Magazine of 1906, gave an account of the Oxford and Cheltenham coach, which only began to