The opposition to the scheme was, of course, enormous; coach
proprietors, innkeepers, the Post-Office officials themselves, were all
against Mr. Palmer; he was voted a crazy enthusiast and a public bore.
Pitt, however, when the scheme was submitted to him, recognized its
feasibility; on the 8th of August 1784 the first mail-coach on Mr.
Palmer's plan started from London at 8 o'clock in the morning and
reached Bristol at 11 o'clock at night; and from that day the success
of the new system was assured.--Mr. Palmer himself, having been
appointed Surveyor and Comptroller-General of the Post-Office, took
rank as an eminent and wealthy public man, M. P. for Bath and what not,
and lived till 1818. De Quincey makes it one of his distinctions that
he "had married the daughter of a duke," and in a footnote to that
paragraph he gives the lady's name as "Lady Madeline Gordon." From an
old Debrett, however, I learn that Lady Madelina Gordon, second
daughter of Alexander, fourth Duke of Gordon, was first married, on the
3d of April 1789, to Sir Robert Sinclair, Bart., and next, on the 25th
of November 1805, to _Charles Palmer, of Lockley Park, Berks, Esq._
If Debrett is right, her second husband was not John Palmer of Mail-
Coach celebrity, and De Quincey is wrong."--MASSON.
1 (footnote) INVENTION OF THE CROSS: Concerning the _Inventio sanctae
crucis_, see Smith, _Dictionary of Christian Antiquities_, Vol.
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