the world, puzzles, difficulties, trials, but in the end name, fame,
riches. If we could follow him past boyhood and just peep at the
future, I should like to tell you how he let some of these fancies
his brother had despised have free play; how he invented a new green
earthenware, forming plates in the shape of ornamental leaves; how he
coloured snuff-boxes and toilet vessels to imitate precious stones, and
how the London jewellers eagerly bought these up. How he made flowered
cups and saucers, familiar enough to us to-day, but strange and
beautiful to people then. Under him things took a step forward. People
even at their meals saw things of beauty. These became an education to
them--an art. Besides this they found other improvements. Lids fitted,
spouts poured, handles could be held! These were small beginnings, but
from these Josiah made great strides.
And one of the secrets of these strides was that he bent his _whole
mind_ upon his work. At night, after a day of hard work, he would
sit down and write out every smallest detail of his experiments and
discoveries. No pains were too great for him to take. Neither would he
trust to memory, so often in pain and weariness, but with a perseverance
that was never daunted, he would make his evening notes.
To him no trouble seemed too great, no detail too small. The boyhood
rarely fails to show the stuff the man is made of, and it was no
ordinary stuff the great potter was made of. So we are not surprised
that step by step he moved upwards and onwards. Hands and brain were
never idle. Often prostrate with pain and weakness, he would still
read and think and plan. Indeed, so much did he get into the habit of
planning that many a night it robbed him of his sleep, for he never lay
down at nights without making in his head a programme for the coming
day.
Another secret of his success was his courage. Was it long familiarity
with pain--for his knee broke out again and again, and gave him weary
hours of suffering--that taught him to endure and resolutely refuse
to be overcome? Was it this made him say with Napoleon, "Nothing is
impossible"?
He met all difficulties alike with patience and with a steadfast purpose
to overcome them. He had two special ones. His workmen--often lazy,
indolent, drunken--were a trouble to him, as were also the furnaces,
where the heat had to be of a certain degree to fire his ware, and where
sometimes the work and labour of months would be destroyed in a few
hours. By patience he won the hearts of the first, and they came to
trust him, and by patience, too, he gradually righted the second. He
pulled down and he built up till the kilns were right.
"It must be done," he used to say of any difficult enterprise, "let what
may stand in the way."
He had great ambition for his beloved calling. He wanted to make it an
art. England had been long famed for cheapness but not for beauty, and
so he set himself to study the designs of the ancients and of the
Greeks, copying them on china and porcelain.
And yet it seemed that even as he took step after step there were ever
on each round of the ladder new difficulties. There was a long-standing
one--the wretched state of the roads in Staffordshire, and the
difficulty of getting the ware carried to other places for sale, and
of getting necessaries for the work brought into the county.
The backs of horses and donkeys, these were the only mode of
conveyance--miserable underfed creatures that tottered and stumbled
along and not seldom stuck in the muddy lanes or fell in the ruts and
rugged roads, and often broke their legs and their wares, and had to be
shot where they lay--a happy release for the poor animals. Josiah saw
all this, and realised that something must be done to remedy the evil.
So in the midst of his watchful care and constant thought for his
beloved potteries he made time to push the grand scheme of a canal that
began gradually to see daylight. It was not pack-horses that would
labour slowly to Birmingham and Sheffield, but a broad waterway to carry
goods to Liverpool and other seaports. This was what his native county
wanted. And so he subscribed largely to this, and helped to push a Bill
through Parliament.
"I scarcely know," he wrote, "whether I am a landed gentleman, an
engineer, or a potter, for indeed I am all three and many other
characters by turns."
In time Burslem, to which he had come back after absence, could hold him
no longer, so he bought a place near and called it Etruria, because for
long he had admired the beautiful work of the Etruscans away north of
the Tiber in Italy.
By his wonderful enterprise he made this bare place blooming and
fruitful, and from a lonely wilderness converted it into a place with
thousands of flourishing houses and workmen. And he himself was the
mainspring of it all--the moving spirit.
Now the inventions of his brain were selling all over the country, and
indeed all over the world. His delicate china had attracted the notice
of the Queen--Charlotte, the wife of George III. It was the full
development of that "cream" ware whose first beginnings had dawned on
his brain as a boy. She ordered a set of it, and henceforth it was known
the "Queen's Ware," and she sent to Josiah Wedgwood and said he might
call himself "Potter to the Queen."
And now his name was made, and soon a fortune followed. He discovered
a "jasper dip," and he invented a special kind of ware of which he
made vases, and for a time it seemed as if the country went mad for
Wedgwood's vases. "A violent vase mania," he called it himself. The
mania spread to Ireland and the Continent. Before this he had opened
showrooms in London, and the Wedgwood vases were wont to draw crowds as
great as the pictures in the Royal Academy. Nor did he confine himself
to vases. He made portraits in china of great men, and fashioned
beautiful chimney-pieces. His heart went out in burning indignation
against the curse of slavery, and he produced a model of a negro
chained in a supplicating attitude, with this motto round the figure:
"Am I not a Man and a Brother?"
Now he had made his fortune, but the man remained the same, much as he
had been as a boy--hard-working, conscientious, painstaking. As a grand
foundation to all his work he had made the surface of the earth a mighty
study, and when he died he left 7,000 specimens of soils and clays
labelled and classified.
Even when rich and famous he still took minute note of details. He
would visit each department of his works himself. He would have nothing
"scamped." Well did the workmen know the "thud" of his wooden leg on the
floor that announced his coming, and with his stick he would break any
article he did not think perfect.
"That won't do for Josiah Wedgwood!" he would say.
As life advanced, while it brought him joys, it brought him also clouds
and sorrows. His knee grew so tormenting that he was forced to have it
taken off. After this he used a wooden leg, or rather many wooden legs,
for he was very particular about having it often renewed. Partial
blindness attacked him, general ill-health, but his pluck, his
perseverance never failed.
As he withdrew a little from active life he took to gardening, but his
family noted his failing powers--not of mind, but of body. Asthma was
added to his other sufferings.
"I am becoming an old man," he wrote. "Age and infirmity overtake me,
and more than whisper in my ear that it is time to diminish rather than
increase the objects of my attention."
The end came very suddenly, and while he was yet not old. A pain in his
jaw was the beginning. Fever and insensibility followed, and in his
sixty-fifth year Josiah Wedgwood closed his eyes on a world that he left
the better for his passage through it.
He had scaled the ladder to its highest height. He was born in a humble
potter's cottage. He died in a mansion, surrounded by a population he
had gathered together and made to flourish. He left half a million, but
he had used his riches well. He had given of them to suffering and
distress. He made a poor depressed trade into one of the flourishing
industries of Great Britain, and for himself a world-wide name. He was
a great pioneer, and he accepted with patience the difficulties, the
thanklessness, the buffetings that confront the man who in anything
attempts the first beginning.
But while we admire his splendid qualities, it is the singular beauty
of his nature--a nature doubtless softened and sweetened by trial--his
uncomplaining bravery, his thought for others, his simple, steadfast
determination to carry through his life-work, in spite of the burden of
weariness and sickness and bodily pain, that most of all speak to our
hearts.
GEORGE STEPHENSON.
If a town, or even a village, is of any importance nowadays it is sure
to have within it or alongside it a railway station, a place that brings
it into touch with the great outside world. Some seventy-five years ago
there were no railways or railway-stations in Great Britain, or anywhere
else, and people were content to post or coach along roads behind
horses. But now times are changed, and it is not wonderful that the name
of George Stephenson, the man who has opened up the country and spread
lines upon it like a mighty network, is a name to-day that people look
up to as one of the greatest inventors the world has ever known.
Most of us are fond of seeing the small beginnings of great endings, so
it is natural enough that for us the tiny village of Wylam should be of
deepest interest, for here George Stephenson first saw the light.
[Illustration: "Stephenson fighting the fire in Killingworth Colliery."]
We cannot visit Wylam without feeling at once that we are in the heart
of the colliery country. Newcastle's lofty chimneys tower some eight
miles off, and chimneys closer at hand belch forth great volumes of
smoke and smut, and flaming furnaces shoot out lurid lights by night far
across the country.
In a common little wayside house, just a labourer's cottage, standing on
the roadside, some 120 years ago a baby opened his eyes on a world that
was to be rough enough at first for his young feet, though at last they
were to land on the very topmost round of the ladder.
The second child of the fireman of the old pumping-engine of the
colliery of Wylam, little George was born to grinding poverty. Time as
it passed brought other children besides George to the Stephensons, and
soon it came to be a question how the fireman and his wife and six
children were to live on 12_s._ a week!
It was indeed a problem to solve and a struggle to face. When food had
been got for the little mouths, what was left for clothes and schooling?
Very little for the first, nothing for the second. No schooling
certainly for little George, and so he spent his childhood between
running errands for his mother and standing by his father's engine fire,
where the boys and girls of the village loved to gather to listen to
old Robert's wondrous tales, or to see the birds fed, for the old man
loved birds of all kinds, and would save the crumbs from his own scant
dinner to feed the robins. Here it was that baby George learned that
early love of birds that lasted as long as life. As a boy he would catch
and tame the blackbirds, and these would fly about the cottage all day,
and at night come and roost at his bed-head. Years after, when he was an
old man, he used to tell how, walking with his father one day, he parted
some thick branches overhead and lifted the child in his arms that he
might peep at a nest full of young blackbirds. It was a sight he never
forgot.
But, baby though he was, his days were not all spent in play. At home
there were seven younger brothers and sisters to be nursed and watched
and kept out of the way of the heavy waggons that were dragged by horses
along the tram-road in front of the house, and much of this fell to
George's share.
As the years passed the Stephenson family, obliged like other colliers
"to follow the work," moved to a place called Dewley Burn, and now as
George had reached the age of eight he was ready to earn some money!
To show how smart and quick the child was for his years there has come
down to us a pretty story.
He and his sister Nell had gone to Newcastle one day, and among their
little commissions they were bent on buying Nell a new bonnet. They
found the very thing she wanted in a shop, but the price was beyond
their purse. It was 1_s._ 3_d._ over the mark, and the pair, sadly
downcast, had to leave the shop. Standing crestfallen outside the boy
suddenly exclaimed, "I have it! Wait here till I come back." Off he
darted, and Nell waited while the minutes wore to hours, and still he
did not come. Just as she began to think he must either have been killed
or run over he dashed up breathless and thrust the coveted 1_s._ 3_d._
into her hand.
"But where did you get it?" she asked, astonished.
"By holding gentlemen's horses," was the reply.
The child's first situation at this time was with a woman who kept a
farm and needed a boy to herd her cows and keep them out of the way of
passing waggons. For this the little herd-boy was paid 2_d._ a day. How
happy he was in long leisure hours to bird's-nest or whittle whistles
out of reeds, or in company with another boy--by-and-by, like himself,
to be one of the world's great engineers--to model toy engines out of
clay, using hollowed corks for corves and hemlock stalks for steam
pipes!
Soon George advanced a step in life. His work was still
farm-work--hoeing turnips for 4_d._ a day, leading the plough horses
when his little legs could hardly stride the furrows, and working in
the dawning hours of day when other children slept.
But his heart was really at the engine fire or in the coal shaft. It
was "bred in the bone," and he gladly returned to the black, grimy
life, and along with his brother became a coal-picker, separating
stones and dross from the coal, and so earning 6_d._ a day.
By-and-by he was advanced to driving "the gin-horse," a horse that
travels round and round at the pit's mouth drawing up and letting down
by means of a rope wound round a drum, baskets of coal or buckets of
water, and for this he was paid 8_d._ a day.
Long miles he had to walk every day to and from his work, "a
grit-growing lad, with bare legs and feet," and I think we may be sure
there was not a bird's nest on that familiar road that the little
bird-lover did not know by heart.
His next rise was to a shilling a day. This was a great step up, and
for this he had what was called a night shift, lading and unlading the
coals as they came to the mouth of the pit, and reversing the rope to
go down again. Monotonous enough work it was, but he held on to it for
two years. And now another step up was at hand. It was a proud day for
the boy--that Saturday afternoon when he was told that his wage had
been raised to 12_s._ a week!
"I am a made man now," he exclaimed in great delight.
And now he was seventeen years old. He had really stepped beyond his
father both in wage and position. But there was one thing which he
had yet to master. It may seem strange to us, but George could neither
read nor write. It began to dawn upon him then that things about
which he wanted to know--pumps and engines and the great world of
mechanics--could only be learned from between the boards of books that
were closed to him. But with George to realise an evil was to try at
once to mend it. Inside the boy's rough working jacket there beat a
manly heart, with a great longing to make the most of his opportunities,
to let no chance slip of doing his best.
So he actually went to school at nights--three times a week, spending
3_d._ out of his wages to be taught to read and write. He laboured on
and made progress, and in time he wrote and read, and by-and-by he took
another step and added to these arithmetic. With marvellous quickness he
"caught on" to figures. In the long weary night shifts sitting by the
blaze of the fire he would "work" the sums his master had "set" him or
write his copies, just as years after, so eager was he to seize every
opportunity that offered, he would many a time (in odd moments) chalk
his sums on the sides of the coal waggons!
So little by little, by untiring labour and unwearied industry, by
"neglecting nothing," he rose. The miners who were his daily companions
were, many of them, a rough lot. Their life was a hard one and their
pleasures few, and on Saturday afternoons--pay-day--their amusements
were cock-fighting, dog-fighting, and drinking in the ale-house, while
the future great engineer might be found engaged in pulling to pieces
his engine, cleaning it, getting to know it as we know the character,
the habits, the face of our dearest friend, all the time laying in such
a store of practical knowledge as was to serve him in good stead in
time to come.
Not that George did not delight in exercise. Indeed, few of his
companions could equal him in athletics. There was nothing he enjoyed
like challenging them to feats of strength in throwing the hammer or in
lifting heavy weights. And even in comparative old age he loved to
engage in a wrestle with a friend.
About this time George had a favourite dog which he taught to fetch and
carry his dinner in a pitcher tied round his neck. At the appointed hour
the creature used to go straight to his master, turning neither to the
right nor to the left. But one day he was beset with danger in the shape
of a bigger dog with murder in its eye. George's dog closed with it, and
a deadly tussle began, but it beat the bully and came off victorious
but bleeding. When he reached his master the pitcher was there, but the
dinner was spilt; but George was prouder far, when an onlooker described
the fight, of his dog's courage than he would have been of the most
sumptuous feast.
But in spite of his larger wage money was scarce, and George beat about
in his own mind how he was to earn a few extra shillings. With keen eye
ever on the outlook for what lay nearest, he lighted on the _shoes_ of
his fellow-workmen! He took to mending these, and he mended them so well
that the pitmen soon got into the way of making George their cobbler.
And from this he went on to making shoe-lasts for the village shoemaker.
In this way it came to pass that in a fortnight's time he would
sometimes make as much as L2. When he had by long and careful labour
saved his first guinea great was his delight. "I am now a rich man!" he
said.
Yet another source of earning money was at hand. One day the chimney of
his house went on fire, and being drenched with water, the soot and
water together succeeded in damaging an eight-day clock that stood in
his kitchen. Money was still scarce, and the watchmaker did not work
without pay, so George set to work and took the clock to pieces, cleaned
it, and put it together again. Rumours of this new "handiness" spread,
and colliers from far and near sent their watches and clocks to him to
doctor. It was almost as if nothing came amiss to these wonderful hands
or, indeed, to that wonderful brain.
A wheezy engine pump, a clock out of gear, a pair of worn-out shoes--he
had a remedy for all. Painstaking, conscientious, thorough--the work of
the boy shadowed forth the success of the man.
If I had space I could tell you how, after he ceased to be a boy, he
became a splendid man. That divine capacity--the creative faculty for
making something out of nothing--that had been struggling long within
him came to the surface, and he burst on the world as an Inventor.
The boon he gave to men--the thing with which his name will ever be
linked in history--is the Locomotive Steam Engine.
What battles he fought for it when the country rose in arms and said
they would rather hold by the old post-horses and coaches that had been
good enough for their fathers! They were hard to convince. They declared
if railways and trains came the country would be ruined. The engines
would vomit forth smoke. No bird could live in the poisoned air. Game
all over the country would be spoiled. The sparks that came from the
engine would set fire to the houses near which they passed. Hens would
stop laying! Cattle would cease to graze! The man who said he would send
engines flying through the air at the rate of twenty miles an hour was
a fool and a maniac!
Then Stephenson showed the same patience--for the world was long of
being convinced--as he had done on those long night-shifts, sitting
lonely by the engine fire and working out his sums, or as years later,
when prospects were very dark and money scarce, he wept bitter tears,
"for he knew not where his lot in life would be cast."
But though only a self-taught mechanic, Stephenson stuck to his guns in
the face of the most skilled engineers in the land. For two long months
the thing hung in the balance. It came before the great House of
Commons. George himself was put into the witness-box. Single-handed,
undaunted, he faced a world that was all against him. And then he had to
bear the great trial of his life. The Bill was thrown out of Parliament.
But still he did not despair. He looked into the future, and he saw
himself conqueror. The Bill was again brought forward and eventually
passed. I could tell you then of his long course of triumphs. How his
engine, "The Rocket," won a L500 prize. How really the first seed of
the Railway System of the world was sown then. How then he got leave to
make a railway between Stockton and Darlington, and in time one between
Manchester and Liverpool. How when, in 1830, the line was finished,
people flocked in hundreds and thousands to see "a steam coach running
upon a railway at three times the speed of a mail-coach."
The people were carried away with excitement! The great steam-horse that
we look at half a dozen times a day with indifference was thought to be
the world's greatest wonder. And George Stephenson was the hero of the
hour. As the train neared Manchester, the people in their excitement
broke all bounds, and even the military could not keep order, as they
swarmed on the carriage like bees, and hung on to the handles, many of
them being tumbled off, while shoutings and cheers went up from a
thousand throats.
And now that he was successful, now that people praised where they
had blamed, and pandered where they had scoffed, the man remained the
same--modest, single-minded, just what he had been as the boy earning
his shilling a day by driving the old "gin" horse at the pit's mouth.
And now from the humble labourer's cottage he had climbed to the
highest heights of fame. He was the first mechanical genius in the eyes
of the world. The greatest in the land rejoiced to honour him. From the
depths of poverty he had risen to wealth. Honours flowed in upon him.
But the "boy is father to the man," and it was peculiarly true of George
Stephenson.
"I never want," he had said long years before, when he was earning
L100 a year, and was able to keep a horse, "I never want to be
higher."
He was much the same as in those old days. There was no dazzling him
with worldly display or worldly honours. He cared little for social
distinctions. His instincts all along had been "to dwell among his own
people." It gave him the keenest pleasure to have a day at Newcastle
among the scenes of his boyhood, looking up the simple friends of his
youth. And his tastes, too, remained in many ways just the old simple
ones. When he was an old man, and nearing the end of his pilgrimage,
when he was surrounded by every luxury of table and otherwise, he would
call for a "crowdie," and with the basin of boiling water between his
knees, would stir in the oatmeal with his own hands, watching it with
great satisfaction, and then sup the whole with sweet milk, pronouncing
it "capital."
His last days were very peaceful. He removed from the swirling current
of business life into a side eddy, when he was about sixty, to a place
called Tapton, where he lived a quiet life, meditating among his beasts
and birds and flowers, reading in each something of the beauty of the
mind of a Greater Inventor than he. He took no part in business life,
leaving it to his son, though now and then he would hear from afar
echoes from the old world as the old war-horse scents the smoke of
battle.