Rowland Eyles Egerton Warburton, who wrote the “Tantivy Trot” in 1834, at the request of Charles Ford for something to celebrate the Birmingham “Tantivy” coach, was regarded by the sporting world as its laureate. He was the squire of Arley Hall, Cheshire, and the owner of many fat acres in that county. He outlived the coaching age by many a long day, and died in 1891 in his 88th year. The last sixteen years of his life were saddened by the affliction of total blindness. CHAPTER XIV GOING BY COACH: BOOKING OFFICES Journeys by coach were entered upon by our grandfathers with much deliberation. It was not then a matter of suddenly making up one’s mind to go somewhere, and going accordingly, with only a few minutes’ preparation. The first step was to book one’s seat, a formality then absolutely necessary, and in most cases some days before the journey was proposed to be taken. Only by doing so could one be sure of finding a place. The nearest modern parallel to this custom is the booking of passages on ocean steamers; and a relic of it may be observed every day at every railway station where the name of “Booking Office” instead of Ticket Office is a survival--like that of the official railway designation of carriages and passenger returns as “coaches” and “coaching traffic”--of customs gone, never to return. The passengers by coach were actually, as the term implies, “booked.” The booking clerk did not merely give one a ticket in exchange for the fare. He entered the passenger’s name and all necessary particulars in a huge ledger, and in this identical manner the first railway passengers secured their places, until the mere work of entering these details became too great. The booking-clerks in coach-offices had their responsibilities, and were kept up to the highest mark of efficiency by the knowledge that if they fell into such an error as overbooking a coach on any particular journey, not only would the proprietors be bound in law to by some means convey those passengers for whom there was no room, but that the extra cost of so doing would infallibly be deducted from their wages. The loss in such cases would inevitably be heavy, but dependent upon the length of the journey. Mistakes of this kind generally meant that the extra passengers were conveyed by post-chaise, at anything from ninepence to a shilling a mile; and it was the difference between these rates and the coach-fares of from twopence to fivepence a mile that the clerks had to make good, unless the overbooked passengers were sufficiently good-natured to wait for another coach. The usual practice on securing a place was to pay a proportion--generally one-half of the fare--down, and the other half on taking one’s seat, as noted in the contemporary doggerel, which declared:-- When to York per mail you start, Four-caped, like other men, To the book-keeper so smart You pay three pounds, in part: Two pounds ten before you start: Sum total, five-pound-ten.