Road Scrapings: Coaches and CoachingHaworth, M. E. (Martin E.)
History
Road Scrapings: Coaches and Coaching
Haworth, M. E. (Martin E.)
Coaching (Transportation)
He took the coach from The Swan with Two Necks, in Ladd Lane, to
Dunstable, and there split the work with young Johnson, who, though
sixty years of age, had three older brothers on the bench. "Spicy Jack"
was the beau ideal of a sporting whip. He was always dressed to the
letter, though his personal appearance had been very much marred by two
coach accidents, in each of which he fractured a leg. The first one
having been hurriedly set a little on the bow, he wished to have the
other arranged as much like it as possible; the result being that they
grew very much in the form of a horse-collar. These "crook'd legs," as
he called them, reduced his stature to about five feet three inches.
He had a clean-shaved face, short black hair, sharp intelligent blue
eyes, a very florid complexion, rather portly frame, clad in the taste
of the period: A blue coat, buttons very widely apart over the region
of the kidneys, looking as if they had taken their places to fight a
duel, rather than belonging to the same coat. A large kersey vest
of a horsecloth pattern; a startling blue fogle and breast-pin; drab
overalls, tightly fitted to the ankle and instep of a Wellington boot,
strapped under the foot with a very narrow tan-coloured strap. The
whole surmounted by a drab, napless hat, with rather a brim, producing
a "slap-up" effect.
When at the local race-meetings, "Spicy Jack" dashed on to the course
in a sporting yellow mail-phaeton, his whip perpendicular, his left
hand holding the reins just opposite the third button of his waistcoat
from the top. Driving a pair of "tits" which, though they had both
chipped their knees against their front teeth, and one of them (a white
one) worked in suspicious boots, produced such an impression upon the
yokels that no one but "Spicy Jack" could come on to a racecourse in
such form.[4]
All this appeared like "cheek," but it was quite the reverse; for
in spite of the familiarity which was universally extended to this
"sporting whip," he never forgot his place with a gentleman, and a more
respectful man in his avocation did not exist.
"Well, Jack, what are we backing?" was the salutation of a noble lord
who had given him a fiver to invest to the best of his judgment.
"Nothing, my lord; we are not in the robbery."
"How's that? we shall lose a race."
"Well, you see, my lord, it was all squared and the plunder divided
before I could get on."
Nobody knew the ropes at Harpenden, Barnet, and St. Albans, when the
platers ran to amuse the public, and the public "greased the ropes,"
better than the waggoner of the "Crown Prince."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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