Colleen McCullough - The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet

Not perhaps the most auspicious start, she reflected as she poked at greasy stew in a secluded corner of the taproom; the inn had no coffee room and no trays were available. Only her most forbidding expression had kept several tipsy drinkers at bay; not really very hungry, she ate what she could and went to her room, there to find that the Pig and Whistle did not close its taproom doors until well into the early hours. What a day to commence a journey! A Saturday.

The stage-coach she boarded at seven in the morning took her as far as Biggleswade, where a party with influence at the coach company in London had booked all its seats onward. The coachman kept his cabin passengers to three on either seat and the noon stop was an hour, time to drink a cup of scalding coffee, use the stinking outhouse, and stretch the legs. The woman in the left opposite corner talked incessantly, which Mary could have borne better had she not found herself the object of remorseless questions-who was she, where was she going, who had died to plunge her into mourning, what a lot of nonsense, to be investigating the plight of the poor! The only way Mary could stem the tide was to pretend to have a fit consisting of jerks and yammers. After that, she sat in peace. The Biggleswade inn was more bearable too, though she had to be up at five to board the stage to Huntingdon, then waited over an hour for it.

She was miles east of where she wanted to be, but knew that she would have to get to Grantham and a coach depot before she could turn west. Her first two days she had spent in the middle of the backward facing seat, but to her joy she was now luckier; she got a window seat facing forward. To be able to gaze out at the countryside was wonderful. The landscape was lovely, flat fields green with crops, coppices, snatches of forest that the coach trundled through in merciful shade; for May the weather was very warm, every day thus far a fine one. As they passed through an occasional village the children spilled out cheering and waving, apparently never tired of seeing the monstrous vehicle and its labouring horses. Labour the horses did; jammed with passengers, local mail and parcels, freight and luggage, the coach was immensely heavy.

The roads were shocking, but no one travelling them ever expected any other state. A coachman tried to avoid the worst of the potholes, but grinding along in the ruts was inevitable. Twice they passed carriages tipped into the ditch, and once some fellow in a many-caped greatcoat almost sent them into the ditch as he thundered past in a curricle drawn by four matched greys, grazing the wheel hubs and setting the coachman to cursing. Local carts, wagons and gigs were a nuisance until their drivers realised that if they did not get off the road in a hurry, they would be turned into kindling.

Those with the money to purchase a ticket on the stage-coach were not poor, though some were close to it. Mary’s seat companion was a mere child going to governess two children near Peterborough; as she looked into that sweet face, Mary suppressed a shudder. For she knew as clearly as if she were a Gypsy peering into a crystal ball that the two children would prove incorrigible. To hire this child said that the Peterborough parents had devoured many governesses. The woman of midage opposite was a cook going to a new position, but she was sliding down the ladder, not moving up it; her rambling conversation betrayed a fondness for the bottle and unclever fraud. How amazing! thought Mary as the miles ground by. I am learning about people at last, and suddenly I realise that my servants in Hertford cheated me, rightly deeming me an ignoramus. I may not yet have encountered any poor, but I am certainly receiving an education. In all my life, I have never before been inescapably exposed to strangers.

The poor walked from place to place, and there were many of them along the road to Huntingdon. A few carried a cloth in which were knotted bread and cheese; some swigged at bottles of gin or rum; but most, it seemed, lacked even food or inebriants. Their toes poked out of their flapping shoes, their children were barefoot, and their clothing was in filthy tatters. Women suckled babes and men made water openly, children squatted to empty their bowels exhibiting a chortling interest in what they produced. But shame and modesty are luxuries only those with money can afford, said Argus. Now Mary saw that for herself.

“How do they manage to live?” she asked a sensible-looking fellow passenger after he tossed a few pennies at a particularly ragged group of these wretched walkers.

“Any way they can,” he answered, wondering at her interest. “’Tis not the season for work on the land-too late for sowing and planting, too early for harvest. Those walking south are going to London, those walking north probably to Sheffield or Doncaster. Hoping for a job of work in a mill or factory. None of these are on the parish, you see.”

“And if they find a job of work, they will not be paid enough to afford both food and shelter,” she said.

“That is the way of the world, marm. I gave that lot my pennies, but I have not enough pennies for them all, and my shillings I must save for myself and my own family.”

But it need not be the way of the world, she said silently. It need not be! Somewhere there are enough pennies. Somewhere, indeed, there are enough shillings.

The journey was very long. What had begun in Biggleswade at seven ended in Huntingdon at seven, the coachman smiling from ear to ear at the speed of his progress. So tired she felt light-headed, Mary discovered that the closest inexpensive inn was some distance away at Great Stukely. Well, nothing for it: tonight she would stay at the post house where the coach had stopped, since she was to board another at six in the morning for the wearisome leg to Stamford.

A meal of properly cooked roast beef, roast potatoes, French beans, peas and hot buttered rolls put new life into her veins, and she slept comfortably-if not for long enough-in a clean feather bed with well-aired sheets. However, half-a-crown was dear . All she could hope was that Stamford held a cheaper place.

The coach did not reach Stamford until nine that night, in a twilight that ordinarily would have enchanted her, perfumed and misty. As it was, the Grantham stage left early-why do they always leave early? I need to sleep, and I have learned that I cannot sleep sitting bolt upright in a smelly coach.

From Stamford to Grantham she found herself squeezed in between two selfish old gentlemen and facing two children sharing one seat. Since both were boys, and of quite the wrong age for a coach journey, they drove their mother to the edge of dementia and the other passengers to the edge of murder. Only a sharp crack around the shins from one old gentleman’s cane saved four people from the hangman’s noose, though the mother told him he was a heartless brute.

Grantham had a coach depot attached to a huge post house and was the centre for a network of stage routes; the town sat on the Great North Road that ran to York and finally to Edinburgh. The only trouble was, Mary learned, that east-west routes did not matter as much as north-south ones. No conveyance bound for Nottingham was due until the day after tomorrow, which left Mary on the horns of a dilemma: did she spend a day of inertia in this busy town at a decent inn, or frugally? Having severely suppressed a qualm of conscience, she elected the elegant post house alongside the depot, secured a room in the back sequestered from the noise of the yard, and ordered a tray of food. A whole two crowns poorer, Mary still couldn’t feel very guilty. Not after those awful boys and their goose of a mother. And who could ever have dreamed that so many old gentlemen with huge paunches travelled long distances by stage-coach?