"There is a pleasure in returning and realising the enjoyments of by-gone years and old-fashioned customs, and so we experienced one afternoon last week when endeavouring to secure a seat outside the Sidmouth Royal mail. Not an inch of room, Sir, says the coachman, and all full inside; but we were not to be done for we had a Christmas feast, a host of smiling faces, and many merry hearts waiting for our arrival at Sidmouth that very evening, so watching the turn of the broad back of the coachman, who stood looking like a stone monument, we bounded on to the top of the coach, laid our railway rug on a leather portmanteau, put our feet on a lady's carpet-bag, and then quietly seated oursekves on what is denominated the roof of the coach, like Albert Smith on the high camel's back, an elegant observer of all observations; the coachman mounted his box, giving us a slight hint to hold on, and whirled us over sixteen miles of most delightful country in a given space of two hours and a quarter, and we at length were set down at the York Hotel where mine host, as worthy a man as ever picked the wing of a turkey or smiled over a bright glass of first-rate sherry, welcomed us unto his well-provisioned domicile."
This correspondent to the Gazette, perhaps a cub-reporter, seems to me to be trying to emulate Charles Dickens. Albert Smith is surely Albert Richard Smith, Victorian author and entertainer, and maybe the camel is to be found in Smith's A month at Constantinople, 1849. The York Hotel is still to be found on the Esplanade at Sidmouth.
Source: The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 17th January 1852
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