Letter #9, Post #3

Monday 9 April 2012
To Cassandra, from the Bull and George in Dartford, "It wanted five minutes of twelve when we left Sittingbourne, from whence we had a famous pair of horses, which took us to Rochester in an hour and a quarter; the post boy seemed determined to show my mother that Kentish drivers were not always tedious, and really drove as fast as Cax. Our next stage was not quite so expeditiously performed; the road was heavy and our horses very indifferent. However, we were in such good time, and my mother bore her journey so well, that expedition was of little importance to us; and as it was, we were very little more than two hours and a half coming hither, and it was scarcely past four when we stopped at the inn. My mother took some of her bitters at Ospringe, and some more at Rochester, and she ate some bread several times." - Jane Austen, Wednesday 24 October 1798

This is a great opportunity to take a look at the travel times in Jane Austen's time.

If they left Sittingbourne at almost noon and arrived at Rochester at 1:15, seventy-five minutes, and the distance between Sittingbourne and Rochester is 11 miles or 17.7 Kilometers, they traveled 6.81 miles an hour and were very happy with the progress.

According to the distance calculator traveling at 50 miles an hour by car it would take you thirteen minutes to get there today. As you can see in the image below the entire day's trip of 45 miles would take an hour and thirty-eight minutes. But, do we stop to smell the roses? Perhaps we can smell them when we get there.

The only thing I can find that might be a meaning for cax is a reference in dictionary.com for William Caxton (1422 to 1491) who printed and published the first book in English (1475) and established the first printing press in 1477. I suppose going from hand copying everything to a printing press would have seemed pretty fast. So, maybe this is the possible reference.

It is very sweet how she kept trying to encourage the Godmersham people that her mother was doing well.

I hope you enjoyed your day today!
Terrie