Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 7.djvu/561

 42 a vn. DEC. ii, 1920.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

461

LONDON, DECEMBER 11,

CONTENTS. No. 139.

.'NOTES: Early Railway Travelling, 461 Ford's Post- . humous Play, ' The Queen, ' 462 London Coffee-houses, Taverns, and Inns in the Eighteenth Century, 464 The Hermit of Hertfordshire William and Ralph Sheldon The Empress Eugenie Horrocks of Toxteth Park, 466 Tavern Sign-boards Early Life and Education of John Evelyn Alphabetical Initials, 467.

QUERIES: 'Memoirs' of Jean Landrieux Early Muster Rolls of the Scots Guards Angelus Tdomas Allsop . St. Oswald. 468" Now, then ! " De Bry's 'Gunpowder Plot' Oxford House, Walthamstow W. C. Dolben : North Wales Volunteers -French Prisoners of War in England Ricraft's 'Survey of English Champions', 469 ivtajor Walter Hawkes Saint Katharine Body's Island Boyal Arms in Churches Lord BeaconsSeld Picture by Sir Leslie Ward Thomas Duchhan-, 470 'The Legitimist Kalendar ' Byerley of Middriggravainge, Durham " Bottle Slider "Author of Quotation Wanted, 471.

iKEPLIES : Cornish Acres in Domesday, 471 Church Li tten Emerson's ' English Traits,' 472 Marcella French Will Proved before Burial of Testator Silver Wine Cisterns 474 English Fairs : Authorities Wanted Pewoer Basins for Baptisms Coats of Arms of Glouces- tershire Sir Robert Bell of Beaupr^ -Floor Coverings of the Tudor Epoch London Insurance Companies : Biblio- graphy London in the Fifties and Sixties : Police Uniforms and Smithfield Meat Market, 475 Snipe in Belgrave Square " Association Books," 476 Peacocks' Feathers The Apocrypha and Coronations The Belfrey at Calais, 477 CoL Mordaunt's Cock Fight Staffordshire Porcelain Dr. Johnson at Chester Dr. Alexander Keith Refusing a Pardon Capt. W. H. Cranstoun Admiral Benbow, 478 -Author of Quotation Wanted, 479. 3IOTES ON BOOKS: 'John Clare Poems: chiefly from Manuscript' Guide to an Exhibition of Historical Authorities illustrative of British History'. 'Tercen- tenary Handlistt of English and Welsh Newspapers, Magazines and Reviews.

JSotices to Correspondents.

EARLY RAILWAY TRAVELLING.

'THE following letter, found, among some family papers, gives a curious picture of a passenger's experience in the infancy of railways. The writer, who was my great- uncle, was, I. believe, a considerable traveller ; and as he was accustomed, so tradition says, to pursue through continental capitals the ^delicacies peculiar to each of them at the proper seasons, one cannot help thinking that he may have speculated regretfully on the new possibilities of rapid travel which he might not live to enjoy. Anyhow he greets the desperate adventure of travelling T)y railway with a cheerful courage ; and he -does not even recall the fact that when the Liverpool and Manchester Railway was opened about a year before, a distinguished politician, William Huskisson, fell under

the engine and was killed. In times like ours, indeed, when any local event of importance is known all over the country the next morning, it seems odd that railway travelling should even in the north of England have been such a novelty six years after the opening of the first railway, from Stockton to Darlington, in 1825.

Copy of letter from W. Dal ton, Esq., Bury St. Ed- munds, to John Gwilt, Esq., Icklingham, Mildenhall, Suffolk.

Liverpool, Sund. 16 Oct. 31. My dear Sir,

Neither unrecollective of nor unwilling to redeem the pledge (that is, I think, the language of political men) which 1 gave you, I take up, not my pen, but the pen of the inn, and a very bad yellow one it is, to give you what is no easy task an idea of the travelling by the railway, by which we came yester- day from Warrington here, and by which we are to return to-morrow, standing as it were between life and death ; for altho' that is in fact our situa- tion here below at each moment, it is, I think impossible for any one not to feel: when he is at so little distance from such a tremendous power in the steam engine which precedes him, that he is not in danger, and imminent danger too. Horace, in his elegant ode about Virgil fully describes in man venturing upon deep waters ; that however we have so far familiarized to ourselves that a british tar w d quiz Horace ; but we have had a fear engrafted upon that, that is of navigating by steam and which besides the explosion of the steam is subject to the consequences of the least interruption in its course from the velocity of the transit : divesting yourself however of these trifling considerations the conveyance itself is aerial you skim along like magic. We drove to the railway office at Warrington a short mile from the town where we took our seats in a machine; for it wasone continued machine altho' having the appearance of 3 regular coaches and three divisions of seats like those in a coffee-room the coaches not open at the top the seats were.
 * Jlli robur et ses triplex,' &c., the hardihood of a

Mrs. p. from having a cold was fearf ull of exposing herself in the open seat & therefore was in one of the coaches in no way differing from those which 250 with horses except that the inside is divided into six seats by elbows like an elbow chair, & no d , so that you take your place by number and get as Far from the steam engine as you can in this we proceeded 5 miles to Newton in less than 25 minutes. There we met the Train, as it is called, not Coach or Coaches, coming from Manchester to Liverpool ;
 * his is at the point called the Viaduct. We then
 * ook to this machine which had no open parts but

compleat handsome coaches in succession but form- 'ng only one machine each having a separate name, 'or instance the Hero, the March of Intellect, &c., fee., and at the end on a platform sat a gentleman ounging at his ease in his barouche. This part we travelled about 15 or 20 miles an hour. Sometimes on a very high raised causeway over a bog called Ohat Moss, then thro' hard rocks cut down to a evel with the other part, & at last just before we cached our destination, thro' a tunnel cut thro* .he rock and lighted by g[reat lamps ?].