The Tally-ho has commenced its trips for the season, and the whips of the Four-in-hand Club are displayin’ their dexterity, but none of ‘em can, I guess, come up in the handlin’ of the ribbons to the “crack” whips of the old stage-coach days.
Some of these old “whips” lived to become quite prominent personages. Two of ‘em who were loudest in their denunciations of railroadin’, when it was first introduced, who sneered at railroads and predicted their downfall, became afterwards prominent railroad men ‘emselves– Chester W. Chapin and Ginery Twitchell, for example. The latter of these two was before he died a railroad president.
Chapin and Twitchell and another stage-driver, old Sam Woodward, who afterwards became one of the features of Adams Express, used to be a good deal together, and passed, the three of ‘em, as the three best whips in the country; but it was never exactly settled which of the three was the best driver of the lot .
Each had his own special patrons and admirers. Chapin one day took a bet of fifty dollars that he could stop a coach-and-four exactly at any desired spot–stop it so accurately and exactly that he could undertake to arrange it so that the stage could be brought to a standstill in such a position that either of the front wheels could be stopped right on or at any given object; not a little behind the object or ahead of it, but directly at it or on it.
A dollar was accordin’ly placed on the road in front of a tavern, and Chapin was told to drive the stage rapidly along, and to halt with the front right-hand wheel directly on top of the dollar. And he fulfilled this condition. The stage was started, driven rapidly, then halted suddenly, and when halted it was found that the dollar lay right under the four right-hand wheel.
As for Sam Woodward, he was great on the scientific handlin’ of his whip. He prided himself that he could do anythin’ with his whip, and one day he did perhaps the most remarkable whippin’ on record. He bet drinks with a swell who occupied an outside seat on the stage that he would whip the head off any fowl along the roadside the swell might select, it bein’ understood that the swell would stand the expens–in other words, be answerable to the owner of the fowl for damages.
This bein’ understood, Woodward started his stage off rapidly, and as it was dashin’ along at top speed a flock of hens came out of a farmhouse and passed alongside of the coach. In front of the flock strutted a rooster, and the swell told Sam to show his skill on the rooster.
Without a word, without any fuss and without stoppin’ his horses, whirlin’ on as fast as ever, Sam Woodward flashed his whip through the air. The thong hissed as it flashed, and, quick as thought almost, wound itself round the extended neck of the rooster, cuttin’ his head clear off as the coach dashed on, leavin’ his body to the astonished hens, and leaving the old woman at the farmhouse to wonder that night how on the face of earth the old rooster had died.
Ginery Twitchell’s strong point was his endurance. He could drive or ride day and night without sleep, food or fatigue, though he liked eatin’, drinkin’ and sleepin’ as well as any man when he could get ‘em.
In the great Harrison, or “Tippecanoe and Tyler too” campaign, Twitchell was employed to get the earliest election returns and carry the news to certain journals in New York and Boston, ahead of all other papers. And he kept this contract, too, although it cost him about twenty-one hours’ hard ridin’ out of the twenty-four.
Twitchell once drove on a wager nine pairs of horses –an eighteen-in-hand–the largest number of horses ever attached, I believe, to one wagon, or driven by one man,although, as I said recently, one of Dodd’s Express men on one occasion drove a considerably larger number; but then, he drove ‘em unattached to any vehicle, round a ring, circus fashion.
And they were as jolly as skillful, these old whips of the stage-coach days. They were all the time tellin’ good stories, or playing’ pranks, or doing’ both.
One of the famous practical jokes of the old fraternity of whips was when Treadwell, afterwards an innkeeper, impersonated Lafayette.
Treadwell was a tall, thin, fine-looking dark-faced man, a good deal like a Frenchman in his appearance. In fact, I believe his mother was a Frenchwoman. He had a very courtly air and prided himself on his gentility; very polite and airy. He got into a part on the country once where nobody knew him but Sam Potter, the regular stage-driver along that route, and he found several people here and there who felt disappointed because they had not had a chance to see General Lafayette, who was then payin’ his second visit to this country. Treadwell really thought it was a pity these good folks had been deprived of the pleasure of beholdin’ this great and glorious patriot, so he determined to make it up to ‘em by givin’ ‘em that pleasure and playin’ Lafayette himself.
He suggested the idea to Potter, who hailed it with delight. Now Treadwell himself had never seen Lafayette, but had been told several times that he looked very much like him, which gave him the idea. But Potter had seen Lafayette, and after he had given Treadwell some points he was willin’ to take an oath or a drink that he could hardly tell Treadwell from Lafayette at a distance. The real trouble in the way was that although the real Lafayette could speak English the bogus Lafayette couldn’t speak any French. But then, as Sam Potter remarked, nobody else in that section of the country could speak French either. So the bogus patriot determined to make up his language as he went along, and with Sam Potter’s assistance made a very successful Lafayette.
Sam gave out along the road what a distinguished passenger he had in his coach, makin’ up some story to account for the General travelin’ alone over a strange route, and Treadwell kept bowin’ from the top of the stage right and left, puttin’ his hand to his heart, shruggin’ his shoulders, winkin’, blinkin’ and grimacin’ as only a monkey or a Frenchman can.
The people turned out to see him. The coach was stopped half a dozen times, and the hand of the distinguished guest of the nation was squeezed by all the men, women and children within reach of the post road for twenty miles.
There was plenty of good eatin’ and drinkin’ goin’ along with the other privileges accorded to the nation’s guest, and Treadwell quaffed and stuffed till he nearly burst.
And sittin’ next at table at one of the taverns on the road to an ancient spinster, the bogus Marquis for sheer deviltry began to make love to the old dame, who took it into her head that the great Frenchman had fallen in love with her. Women, you know, are never too old to believe the possibility of any man fallin’ in love with ‘em.
For years after, till the day of her death, the old maid really believed, and chuckled in the belief, that the great General, Marquis de Lafayette, had been impressed with her charms, and for six months or more the whole country believed that they had seen “the friend of Washington.” Then Sam Potter changed his stage route, let the cat out of the bag, and left the country.
[Editor’s notes: Though the veracity of the above column appears to be suspect, it is grounded in source material. The anecdote about inn-keeper Treadwell imitating Lafayette can be found in T. W. Tucker’s Waifs from the Way-Bills of an Old Expressman, New York: Lee an Shepard, 1872. Woodward, Potter, and Treadwell were real, as were rail magnates Chapin and Twitchell.]
