Let the steam pot Hiss till it's hot, But give me the speed of the Tantivy Trot.
[Illustration: THE RAILWAY JUGGERNAUT OF 1845]
The mania was not confined to men: _Punch_ satirizes the ladies who were "stagging it" under the heading "A Doe in the City," and suggests a Joint Stock Railway Workhouse as the natural and fitting end of all these operations. This idea is further developed in "Jaques in Capel Court," a parody which begins:--
All the world are stags! Yea, all the men and women merely jobbers--
and after enumerating the various phases of the mania, concludes:--
Last scene of all, That ends this sad but common history, Is Union pauperism and oakum-picking: Sans beer, sans beef, sans tea, sans everything.
Railway titles, a railway peerage and Parliament are foreshadowed, with King Hudson, "the monarch of all they 'survey,'" installed in his palace at Hampton Court. The relations of John Bull--on whom "the sweet simplicity of the three per cents." had begun to pall--with humbugging promoters is hit off in the stanza:--
Said John, "Your plan my mind contents, I'm sick and tired of Three per Cents.; And don't get enough by my paltry rents"-- So he got hooked in by the railway "gents."
In his anti-Puseyite zeal _Punch_ mendaciously declares that a railway from Oxford to Rome has been projected with the Pope's approval. In fact, any stick was good enough to beat the speculators with. "Locksley Hall" is parodied as "Capel Court," and the rush to deposit plans at the Board of Trade, when special trains were chartered by rival promoters, is described in humorous detail in a _Punch_ ballad. Padded suits are suggested in 1846 as a protection against railway accidents, but the best summary--with all its exaggerations--of the discomforts of railway travelling in the mid 'forties is to be found in the "Rules and Regulations for Railways":--
The French Government has published a royal _ordonnance_, fixing the regulations that are henceforward to be observed by all railway companies in working their lines. As it is a pity these things should be better managed in France, we publish a set of regulations for English railways. Lord John Russell is welcome to them, if he likes.
Every passenger in the second or third class is to be allowed to carry a dark lantern, or a penny candle, or a safety lamp, into the train with him, as the directors have kept the public in the dark quite long enough.