Journey to Oxford.—Stage-Coach Travelling and Company. Thursday, July 1.
The stage-coach in which we had taken our places was to start at six. We met at the inn, and saw our trunks safely stowed in the boot, as they call a great receptacle for baggage, under the coachman’s feet: this is a necessary precaution for travellers in a place where rogues of every description swarm, and in a case where neglect would be as mischievous as knavery.—There were two other passengers, who, with ourselves, filled the coach. The one was evidently a member of the university; the other a fat vulgar woman who had stored herself with cakes, oranges and cordials 355for the journey. She had with her a large bundle which she would not trust in the boot, and which was too big to go in the seat, so she carried it upon her lap. A man and woman, who had accompanied her to the inn, stood by the coach till it set off; relations they seemed to be, by the familiar manner in which they spoke of those to whom she was returning, sending their love to one, and requesting to hear of another, and repeating ‘Be sure you let us know you are got safe,’ till the very last minute. The machine started within a few minutes of the time appointed; the coachman smacked his whip, as if proud of his dexterity, and we rattled over the stones with a fearful velocity, for he was driving four horses. In Piccadilly he stopped at another inn, where all the western stages call as they enter or go out of town: here we took in another cargo of parcels, two passengers mounted the roof, and we once more proceeded.
We left town by the great western road, 356the same way which I had entered. It was a great relief when we exchanged the violent jolting over the stones for steady motion on a gravel road; but the paved ways were met with again in all the little towns and townlets;[22] and as these for a considerable distance almost join each other, it was a full hour before we felt ourselves fairly in the country. Several stages passed us within a few miles of London, on their way up: they had been travelling all night; yet such are their regularity and emulation, that though they had come about thirty leagues, and stopped at different places, not one was more than ten minutes distance apart from another.
22.  Lugares. Villages would have been an improper name for such places as Kensington, &c.
Englishmen are not very social to strangers. Our fellow-traveller composed himself to sleep in the corner of the coach; but women are more communicative, and the good lady gave us her whole history before we arrived at the end of the first 357stage;—how she had been to see her sister who lived in the Borough, and was now returning home; that she had been to both the play-houses; Astley’s Amphitheatre, and the Royal Circus; had seen the crown and the lions at the Tower, and the elephants at Exeter ’Change; and that on the night of the illumination she had been out till half after two o’clock, but never could get within sight of M. Otto’s house. I found that it raised me considerably in her estimation when I assured her that I had been more fortunate, and had actually seen it. She then execrated all who did not like the peace, told me what the price of bread had been during the war and how it had fallen, expressed a hope that Hollands and French brandy would fall also; spoke with complacency of Bonniprat, as she called him, and asked whether we loved him as well in our country as the people in England loved King George. On my telling her that I was a Spaniard, not a Frenchman, she accommodated her conversation 358accordingly, said it was a good thing to be at peace with Spain, because Spanish annatto and jar raisins came from that country, and enquired how Spanish liquorice was made, and if the people wer’n’t papists and never read in the Bible. You must not blame me for boasting of a lady’s favours, if I say my answers were so satisfactory that I was pressed to partake of her cakes and oranges.
We breakfasted at Slough, the second stage; a little town which seems to be chiefly supported by its inns. The room into which we were shown was not so well furnished as those which were reserved for travellers in chaises; in other respects we were quite as well served, and perhaps more expeditiously. The breakfast service was on the table and the kettle boiling. When we paid the reckoning, the woman’s share was divided among us; it is the custom in stage-coaches, that if there be but one woman in company the other passengers pay for her at the inns.
359We saw Windsor distinctly on the left, standing on a little eminence, a flag upon the tower indicating that the royal family were there. Almost under it were the pinnacles of Eton college, where most of the young nobility are educated immediately under the sovereign’s eye. An inn was pointed out to me by the road side, where a whole party, many years ago, were poisoned, by eating food which had been prepared in a copper vessel. The country is flat, or little diversified with risings, beautifully verdant, though with far more uncultivated ground than you would suppose could possibly be permitted so near to such a metropolis. The frequent towns, the number of houses by the road side, and the apparent comfort and cleanliness of all, the travellers whom we met, and the gentlemen’s seats, as they are called, in sight, every one of which was mentioned in my Book of the Roads, kept my a............