A commemoration of long service in the coaching department may be related here. In the autumn of 1835, a handsome compliment was paid to Mr. Charles Holmes, the driver and part proprietor of the Blenheim coach (from Woodstock to London) to celebrate the completion of his twentieth year on that well-appointed coach, a period that had elapsed without a single accident to his coach, his passengers, or himself; and during which time, with the exception of a very short absence from indisposition, he had driven his sixty-five miles every day, making somewhere about twenty-three thousand miles a year. The numerous patrons of the coach entered into a subscription to present him with a piece of plate; and accordingly a cup, bearing the shape of an antique vase, the cover surmounted by a beautifully modelled horse, with a coach and four horses on one side, and a suitable inscription on the other, was presented to Mr. Holmes by that staunch patron of the road, Sir Henry Peyton, Bart., in August, at a dinner at the Thatched House Tavern, St. James's-street, to which between forty and fifty gentlemen sat down. The list of subscribers amounted to upwards of two hundred and fifty, including among others the Duke of Wellington.
[30] Athenæum review of Captain Gronow's Anecdotes.
[32] Written, it must be recollected, some thirty years since. Reprinted in Murray's 'Reading for the Rail.'
[33] Perhaps one of the finest specimens of good coachmanship was performed by Sir Felix Agar. He made a bet, which he won, that he would drive his own four-horses-in-hand, up Grosvenor-place, down the passage into Tattersall's Yard, around the pillar which stands in the centre of it, and back again into Grosvenor-place, _without either of his horses going at a slower pace than a trot_.
To Hoyle has been ascribed the invention of the game of Whist. This is certainly a mistake, though there can be no doubt that it was indebted to him for being first specially treated of and introduced to the public in a scientific manner. He also wrote on piquet, quadrille, and backgammon, but little is known of him more than he was born in 1672, and died in Cavendish-square on 29th August, 1769, at the advanced age of ninety-seven. He was a barrister by profession, and Registrar of the Prerogative in Ireland, a post worth £600 a year. His treatise on Whist, for which he received from the publisher the sum of £1000, ran through five editions in one year, besides being extensively pirated.