Woe is me! the present generation, – a generation most assuredly wise in its own eyes, can never know what I, and others verging on forty, know – the real luxury of an English fire after travelling all night as an outside passenger on the top, say, for instance, of the Royal London and Yarmouth mail. Pardon my emotion, but I must shut my eyes, and endeavour to recall the past. It is six o’clock on a night cold as that in which I now write; I am at the ancient hostelry, now gone to the dogs, known as the White Horse, Fetter Lane, on the top of the mail aforesaid. The many-caped coachman, has clambered up into his seat; I sit by his side, perched somewhat like a mummy; outside and in we are full of passengers. The red-coated guard blows cheerily on the far-resounding horn. “Let them go,” says the coachman, and four faultless greys, impatient of restraint, rush forth with their living load: in a twinkling we stoop under the ancient gateway, and turn into Fetter Lane; now we cautiously descend Holborn Hill, skilfully we are steered through Cheapside, past the Mansion House, through Cornhill, along dark and sullen Leadenhall, Whitechapel, all glaring with gas and butcher’s meat; our driver gives the horses their heads, and our pace becomes pleasant. We pass Bow Church, and the bridge at Stratford, and now we have left the gaslights far behind, above us is the grand dome of heaven studded with its myriads of stars. Hedge and field far and near are covered with a mantle of virgin snow. The traffic on the road has trodden it into firmness, and on we speed till we reach Romford, not then as now known all over London for its ales. I believe these ales are the occasion of an anecdote, which I may here repeat: – Two friends went into a public-house and were regaled plentifully with them, but not finding them so strong as they wished were much disgusted, and rose to go; however, they had not gone far before the ale began to tell; one traveller soon found himself in a ditch on one side of the road, while his friend was prostrate in another. “Holloa,” said the one to the other, “that ale war’nt so bad as I thought.” “No, no,” was the reply of his now apparently-satisfied friend. But here we are at Romford. Fresh cattle are standing ready to take the place of the four who have gallantly drawn us hither. But there is time to jump down, and “have a drop of summut short,” to catch a glimpse from the most glorious of fires, and to feel for the buxom landlady, and her clean and rosy-cheeked Hebes, very strong feelings of personal regard. “All ready,” cries the ostler, and away we rush from this fairy land, as it seems to us, out into the cold dark night; the guard blows his horn; curtains are drawn on one side as we pass, that, out of warm rooms, curious eyes may look on us. The pikekeeper bids us, for him, an unusually cheerful good-night, and by this time some of the old pilots returning to Southwold, or Lowestoft, or Yarmouth, after having been with vessels up the Thames, cheered by the contents of various libations, wake the dull ear of night with songs occasionally amatory, but chiefly of a nautical character; and if there is a chorus, – why, we can all join in that; are we not jolly companions, every one? Does not this beat railway travelling? “I believe you, my boys.” I say the present race of men have no conception of this. Why, look at a London omnibus; for nine months out of the twelve a cockney can’t ride, even from the Bank to Pimlico, without getting inside. A friend of mine, one of the good old sort, rides into town winter and summer outside a distance of about nine miles. “Of course you wear a respirator,” said a young cockney to him. My friend only laughed. When the Royal Yarmouth Mail ran its gay career, there were no respirators then. What if the night were cold – what if snow laid heavily on the ground – what if railway rugs were not; did we not sit close together and keep each other warm – did we not smoke the most fragrant of weeds – did we not, while the coach changed horses, jump down, and, rushing into the cosiest of bar-parlours (forgive us, J. B. Gough), swallow brandy-and-water till our faces were as scarlet peonies, and we tingled, down to the very soles of our feet, with an unwonted heat? A coal fire then was a sight to cheer the cockles of one’s heart, to look forward to for one long stage, and to think of for another. But times change, and we with them. The other day I met one of our mail-coachmen ingloriously driving a two-pair buss between the City and Norwood; he looked down at his horses and then up at us with an expression Robson might have envied. Let me return to coal. Gentle reader, did you ever go down a coal-pit? – I once did, and I think, with Sheridan, it is hardly worth while going down one, when you might just as well say you had been. I was a stranger then to coal-pits and collieries, rather greener then than I am now, and had on a bran-new suit of clothes and patent-leather boots, and thus accoutred I was let down into the bowels of the earth, wandered along little ways in beds of coal, past little nooks where black men were at work, or resting on lumps of coal dining on bread-and-bacon, and drinking cold tea; and then there were tramways, and horses drawing the coal to the mouth of the pit, and boys to drive the horses, and boys to hold lamps, and all around you was black coal, save where it shone with the reflection of your light, and beneath you trod in mud, all made of coal-dust and water, of a character to ruin patent-leather for ever. I was not sorry, I assure you, when I left the lower regions, and was hauled up to the light of day. Once upon a time, an exciseman at Merthyr Tydvil was overcome by liquor (for excisemen are but men) and fell asleep. Excisemen are not generally a very popular class of Her Majesty’s subjects, and there are many who owe them a grudge. This was the case with our hero. Accordingly, the enemy, in the shape of half-a-dozen dusky colliers, made their appearance, and deposited their unconscious prize,
“Full many a fathom deep,”
as Mr. Campbell says, in a coal pit. Alas! the inspiration of wine is but short-lived. From his glorious dreams of marble halls the exciseman awoke; wonderingly he opened his eyes and looked around. Where was he? To what dark and dolorous shades had he been conveyed? That conscience which does make cowards of us all answered the question: – he had been for his sins conveyed to that fearful locality which a popular clergyman once told his hearers he would not shock their feelings by naming in so well-bred and respectable an assembly; there he was, far away from the light of the sun and the haunts of men. Everything around him was dark and drear. At length a faint glimmer of light appeared in the distance. It came nearer and nearer, by its light he saw a form he thought resembled the human, but of that he was not quite sure. The exciseman felt with Hamlet:
“Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned.
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
Be thy intents wicked or charitable,
Thou comest in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee.”
Accordingly he spoke, and very naturally asked the new-corner, “Who are you?” “Why, I was when I lived on earth an exciseman, but now I am – ” “You don’t say so,” exclaimed the interrogator, as sober as he ever was in his life. But the joke had now been carried far enough, and the exciseman gladly returned to the light of day, and the society of his fellow-man.
A coal pit, or rather a coal country, such as that you see around Merthyr Tydvil, or as you speed on by the Great Northern to Newcastle, does not give you a bad idea of Pandemonium. A coal pit is generally situated by the side of some bleak hill where there are but few signs of life. A cloud of smoke from the engine, or engines, hangs heavily all round. The workmen, of whom there may be hundreds, with the exception of a few boys, who stand at the mouth of the pit to unload the coal waggons as they come up, or to run them into the tram-road that connects them with the neighbouring railroad, or canal, are all under-ground. If you descend, a lighted candle is put into your hand, and you must grope your way as best you can. If the vein of coal be a pretty good one you will be able to walk comfortably without much trouble, but you must mind and not be run over by the coal waggons always passing along. As you proceed you will observe numerous passages on each side which lead to the stalls in which the men work, and hard work it is, I can assure you: a great block is first undermined, and then cut out by wedges driven into the solid coal; I believe the work is chiefly contracted for at so much a ton. In these little stalls the men sit, and dine, and smoke. Little else is to be seen in a coal pit. There are doors by which the air is forced along the different passages; there are engines by which the water is drained off; there is constant communication between the upper and the lower world, all going on with a methodical exactness which can only be violated with loss of life. Let the engines cease, and possibly in a couple of hours the pit may be filled with water. Let a workman, as is too often the case,