The Dover Road: Annals of an Ancient TurnpikeHarper, Charles G. (Charles George)
History
The Dover Road: Annals of an Ancient Turnpike
Harper, Charles G. (Charles George)
Dover Road (England); England -- Description and travel; England -- Social life and customs
However, a crown was levied on passing his luggage by an innkeeper who
held the _droit de viscomte_. All the inns were crowded with the miserable
travellers just landed, and he with whom we are particularly concerned
found it necessary to go into the kitchen of his inn and take off, with
his own hands, one of the _tranches de boeuf_ grilling on the coals.
After this exploit, he cautiously went to bed at six o'clock in the
afternoon, for there were not enough beds to go round, and possession was
ever nine points of the law! At three in the morning he was called upon to
turn out in favour of a new arrival; but, notwithstanding all the rout
they made, he held to his four-poster until five, when he was turned out
and the game of Box and Cox commenced.
The sole inhabitants of Dover (says our traveller) were sailors, ships'
captains, and innkeepers. The height of the triumphal arches, on which the
vast signboards of the inns spanned the narrow streets, and the ridiculous
magnificence of the ornaments that headed them, were wonderful as compared
with the little post-boys, children of twelve and thirteen years of age,
who were starting every minute in sole charge of post-chaises. The great
multitude of travellers with which Dover was crowded afforded a reason for
dispensing with a police regulation which forbade public conveyances to
travel on Sundays, and on that day he set out with seven other passengers
in two carriages called ("called," you notice, like that street in
Jerusalem that was "called" straight) "flying machines." There were six
horses to a machine, and they covered the distance to London in one day
for one guinea each person; passengers' servants carried outside at
half-price. The coachmen, who were most kindly disposed towards their
horses, carried whips, certainly, but they were no more in their hands
than the fan is in winter in the hand of a lady; they only served to make
a show with, for their horses scarcely ever felt them, so great was the
tenderness of the English coachman with his cattle.
But see the peculiar advantages of travelling on Sunday. There were no
excisemen anywhere on duty, and even the highwaymen had ceased their
labours during the night. The only knights of the road our travellers
encountered were dangling from gibbets by the wayside in all the glories
of periwigs and full-skirted coats. Unfortunately, the pace was marred by
the frequent stoppages made to unload the brandy-kegs at the roadside inns
from the boots of the coaches, where they had been stowed away in the
absence of the gaugers.
[Sidenote: FOREIGNERS ON ENGLAND]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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