Towards the close of the last century, a bare-legged herd-laddie, about
eight years old, might have been seen, in a field at Dewley Burn, a
little village not far from Newcastle, amusing himself by making
clay-engines, with bits of hemlock-stalk for imaginary pipes. The child
is father of the man; and in after years that little fellow became the
inventor of the passenger locomotive, and as the founder of the gigantic
railway system which now spreads its fibres over the length and breadth,
not only of our own country, but of the civilized world, the true hero
of the half-century.
The second son of a fireman to one of the colliery engines, who had six
children and a wife to support on an income of twelve shillings a-week,
George Stephenson had to begin work while quite a child. At first he was
set to look after a neighbour's cows, and keep them from straying; and
afterwards he was promoted to the work of leading horses at the plough,
hoeing turnips, and such like, at a salary of fourpence a-day. The lad
had always been fond of poking about in his father's engine house; and
his great ambition at this time was to become a fireman like his father.
And at length, after being employed in various ways about the colliery,
he was, at the age of fourteen, appointed his father's assistant at a
shilling a-day. The next year he got a situation as fireman on his own
account; and "now," said he, when his wages were advanced to twelve
shillings a-week--"now I'm a made man for life."
The next step he took was to get the place of "plugman" to the same
engine that his father attended as fireman, the former post being rather
the higher of the two. The business of the plugman, the uninitiated may
be informed, is to watch the engine, and see that it works properly--the
name being derived from the duty of plugging the tube at the bottom of
the shaft, so that the action of the pump should not be interfered with
by the exposure of the suction-holes. George now devoted himself
enthusiastically to the study of the engine under his care. It became a
sort of pet with him; and he was never weary of taking it to pieces,
cleaning it, putting it together again, and inspecting its various parts
with admiration and delight, so that he soon made himself thoroughly
master of its method of working and construction.
Eighteen years old by this time, George Stephenson was wholly
uneducated. His father's small earnings, and the large family he had to
feed, at a time when provisions were scarce and at war prices, prevented
his having any schooling in his early years; and he now set himself to
repair his deficiencies in that respect. His duties occupied him twelve
hours a-day, so that he had but little leisure to himself; but he was
bent on improving himself, and after the duties of the day were over,
went to a night-school kept by a poor teacher in the village of
Water-row, where he was now situated, on three nights during the week,
to take lessons in reading and spelling, and afterwards in the science
of pot-hooks and hangers as well; so that by the time he was nineteen he
was able to read clearly, and to write his own name. Then he took to
arithmetic, for which he showed a strong predilection. He had always a
sum or two by him to work out while at the engine side, and soon made
great progress.
The next year he was appointed brakesman at Black Collerton Colliery,
with six shillings added to his wages, which were now nearly a pound
a-week, and he was always making a few shillings extra by mending his
fellow-workmen's shoes, a job at which he was rather expert. Busy as he
was with his various tasks, he found time to fall in love. Pretty Fanny
Henderson, a servant at a neighbouring farm, caught his fancy; and
getting her shoes to mend, it cost him a great effort to return them to
the comely owner after they were patched up. He carried them about with
him in his pocket for some time, and would pull them out, and then gaze
fondly at them with as much emotion as the old story tells us the sight
of the dainty glass slipper, which Cinderella dropped at the ball,
excited in the breast of the young prince. Bent upon taking up house for
himself, with Fanny as presiding genius, Stephenson now began to save
up, and declared himself a "rich man" when he put his first guinea in
the box.
Instead of spending the Saturday afternoon with his fellow-workmen in
the public-house, Stephenson employed himself in taking the engine to
pieces, and cleaning it; but besides his attention to work, he was also
remarkable for his skill at putting and wrestling, in which he beat most
of his comrades. And he was not without pluck either, as he let a great
hulking fellow, who was the bully of the village, know to his cost, by
giving him such a drubbing as made him a "sadder and wiser man" for some
time afterwards. He still continued his attendance at the night-school,
till he had got out of the master as much instruction in arithmetic as
he was able to supply.
By the time he was of age he had saved up enough to take a little
cottage and furnish it comfortably, though, of course, very humbly; and
in the winter of 1802, Fanny, now Mrs. George Stephenson, rode home from
church on horseback, seated on a pillion behind her husband, with her
arms round his waist; and very proud and happy, we may be sure, he was
that day, as the neighbours came to their doors to wish him "God speed"
in his new mode of life.
Having learned all he could from the village teacher, George Stephenson
now began to study mensuration and mathematics at home by himself; but
he also found time to make a number of experiments in the hope of
finding out the secret of perpetual motion, and to make shoe-lasts and
shoes, as well as mend them. At the end of 1803 his only son, Robert,
was born; and soon after the family removed to Killingworth, seven miles
from Newcastle, where George got the place of brakesman. They had not
been settled long here when Fanny died--a loss which affected George
deeply, and attached him all the more intensely to the offspring of
their union. At this time everything seemed to go wrong with him. As if
his wife's death was not grief enough, his father met with an accident
which deprived him of his eye-sight, and shattered his frame; George
himself was drawn for the militia, and had to pay a heavy sum of money
for a substitute; and with his father, and mother, and his own boy to
support, at a time when taxes were excessive and food dear, he had only
a salary of L50 or L60 a-year to meet all claims. He was on the verge of
despair, and would have emigrated to America, if, fortunately for our
country, he had not been unable to raise sufficient money for his
passage. So he had to stay in the old country, where a bright and
glorious future awaited him, dark and desperate as the prospect then
appeared.
He still went on making models and experiments, and perfecting his
knowledge of his own engine. To add to his earnings he also took to
clock-cleaning, with the view of saving up enough to give his boy the
best education it was in his power to bestow. "In the earlier period of
my career," he used afterwards to say, "when Robert was a little boy, I
saw how deficient I was in education, and I made up my mind that he
should not labour under the same defect, but that I would put him to a
good school, and give him a liberal training. I was, however, a poor
man, and how do you think I managed? I betook myself to mending my
neighbours' clocks and watches at nights, after my daily labour was
done, and thus I procured the means of educating my son." George began
by teaching his son to work with him; and when the little chap could not
reach so high as to put a clock-hand on, would set him on a chair for
the purpose, and very proud Robert was whenever he could "help father"
in any of his jobs.
About this time a new pit having been sunk in the district where he
worked, the engine fixed for the purpose of pumping the water out of the
shaft was found a failure. This soon reached George's ears. He walked
over to the pit, carefully examined the various parts of the machinery,
and turned the matter over in his mind. One day when he was looking at
it, and almost convinced that he had discovered the cause of the
failure, one of the workmen came up, and asked him if he could tell what
was wrong.
"Yes," said George; "and I think I could alter it, and in a week's time
send you to the bottom."
George offered his services to the engineer. Every expedient had been
tried to repair the engine, and all had failed. There could be no harm,
if no good, in Stephenson trying his hand at it. So he got leave, and
set to work. He took the engine entirely to pieces, and in four days had
repaired it thoroughly, so that the workmen could get to the bottom and
proceed with their labours. George Stephenson's skill as an
engine-doctor began to be noised abroad, and secured him the post of
engine-wright at Killingworth, with a salary of L100 a-year. Robert was
now old enough to go to school, and was sent to one in Newcastle, to
which, dressed in a suit of coarse grey stuff cut out by his father, he
rode every day upon a donkey. Robert spent much of his spare time in the
Literary and Philosophical Institute of Newcastle; and would sometimes
take home a volume from the library, which father and son would eagerly
peruse together. Occasionally they tried chemical experiments together;
and now and then Robert would try his hand by himself. On one occasion
he electrified the cows in an adjacent enclosure by means of an electric
kite, making the bewildered animals dash madly about the field, with
their tails erect on end; and another time he administered a severe
electric shock to his father's Galloway pony, which nearly knocked it
over, and drew down upon him the affected wrath of his father, who,
coming out at the instant, shook his whip at him and called him a
mischievous scoundrel, though pleased all the while at the lad's
ingenuity and enterprise. As an early proof of the former, there still
stands over the cottage door at Killingworth a sun-dial, constructed by
Robert when he was thirteen years old, with some little help from his
father.
The idea of constructing a steam-engine to run on the colliery
tram-roads leading to the shipping-place was now receiving considerable
attention from the engineering community. Several schemes had been
propounded, and engines actually made; but none of them had been brought
into use. A mistaken notion prevailed that the plain round wheels of an
engine would slip round without catching hold of the rails, and that
thus no progress would be made; but George Stephenson soon became
convinced that the weight of the engine would of itself be sufficient to
press the wheels to the rails, so that they could not fail to bite. He
turned the subject over and over in his mind, tested his conceptions by
countless experiments, and at length completed his scheme. Money for the
construction of a locomotive engine on his plan having been supplied by
Lord Ravensworth, one was made after many difficulties, and placed upon
the tram-road at Killingworth, where it drew a load of 30 tons up a
somewhat steep gradient at the rate of four miles an hour. Still there
was very little saving in cost, and little advance in speed as compared
with horse-power; but in a second one, which Stephenson quickly set
about constructing, he turned the waste steam into the chimney to
increase the draught, and thus puff the fuel into a brisker flame, and
create a larger volume of steam to propel the locomotive. The
fundamental principles of the engine thus formed remain in operation to
this day; and it may in truth be termed the progenitor of the great
locomotive family.
In 1821 George Stephenson got the appointment of engineer, with L300 of
salary, to the Stockton and Darlington Railway Company, in the Act of
Parliament for which power was given to use locomotive engines, if
needful, either for the conveyance of goods or passengers. When the line
was opened, it was worked partly by horses and partly by locomotive and
stationary engines. This led to a partnership between Mr. Edward Pease
of Darlington, the chief projector of the line, and Stephenson, in a
locomotive manufactory in Newcastle,--for many years the only one of the
kind in existence.
Meanwhile, young Robert Stephenson, having spent a year or two in
gaining a practical acquaintance with the machinery and working of a
colliery, went to the University of Edinburgh, where he spent a session
in attending the courses of lectures on chemistry, natural philosophy,
and geology. He made the best of his opportunities; and that he might
profit to the utmost by the lectures, he studied short-hand, and took
them all down _verbatim_, transcribing his notes every evening before
he went to bed. Robert brought home the prize for mathematics, and
showed he had made so much progress at college that, though the L80
which the session cost was a large sum to his father at that time,
George never failed, then or afterwards, to declare that it was one of
the best investments he had ever made.
After a year or two in his father's locomotive factory, Robert spent two
or three years in charge of the machinery of a mining company in
Columbia, and returned to England at the close of 1827, to find the
great question, "Whether locomotives can be successfully and profitably
applied to passenger traffic?" hotly agitated, his father, almost alone,
taking the side of the travelling, against that of the fixed engines,
and insisting that the wheel and the rail were clearly and closely part
of one system.
The success of the Darlington line induced the Liverpool merchants to
project a line between that town and Manchester; and George Stephenson
was almost unanimously chosen engineer, though it was still undetermined
whether the new line should be worked by steam or horse power. But,
apart from that question, a great, and, as it appeared to most of the
engineers of the time, an insurmountable difficulty existed in the
quagmire of Chat Moss,--an enormous mass of watery pulp, which rose in
height in wet, and sank in dry weather like a sponge, and over whose
treacherous depths it was pronounced impossible to form a firm road. It
was perfect madness to think of such a thing, said the engineers, and
none of them would support Stephenson's scheme; but he resolved to see
what could be done. Truck-load after truck-load of stuff was emptied
into the moss, and still the insatiable bog kept gaping as though it had
not had half a feed. The directors, alarmed, would have abandoned the
project, had they not been so deeply involved that they were obliged to
let Stephenson continue. But he never doubted himself--not for a moment.
He only pushed on the works more vigorously; and, before six months were
over, the directors found themselves whirling along over the very bog
they expected all their capital was to be fruitlessly sunk to the bottom
of. Still, no decision had been come to as to whether locomotive or
fixed engines were to be adopted; and the Stephensons were still
battling bravely in favour of the locomotive against a host of
opponents. Robert did his father good service by the able and pithy
pamphlets which he wrote on the subject; and at length their
perseverance was rewarded by the directors consenting to employ a
locomotive, if they could get one that would run at the rate of ten
miles an hour, and not weigh more than six tons, including tender; and
offering a reward of L500 for the best engine fulfilling these
conditions. George Stephenson and his son set to work immediately, and
the product of their united skill and ingenuity was the celebrated
_Rocket_, which carried off the prize, and attained a speed of
twenty-nine miles on the opening day. The practicability and success of
the locomotive was now beyond a doubt; from that day forward public
opinion began to turn. Of course, for many a long year afterwards there
were not wanting numbers of bigoted men of the old school who cried down
the new-fangled system, and would hear of no means of transit but the
stage-coach and the canal-boat. But shrewd folk, like the old Duke of
Bridgewater, whose faculties were sharpened by their pockets being in
danger, could not help crying out, "There's mischief in these tram-ways!
I wish the canals mayn't suffer;" and, within ten years of the day when
the _Rocket_ went puffing triumphantly along the Liverpool and
Manchester line, most sensible people had become convinced of the
importance of the locomotive railway, and scarcely a principal town in
the country but was supplied with a line.
The Stephensons had fought a hard fight for their protege, "rail and
wheel," and now they were to reap the fruits of their enterprise and
foresight. To nearly all the most important of the new lines George
Stephenson acted as engineer; and thus, in the course of two years,
above 321 miles of railway were constructed under his superintendence,
at a cost of L11,000,000 sterling. Robert at first left his father to
attend to the laying out of railways, and directed his attention to the
improvement of the locomotive in all its details, experimenting
incessantly, and trying now one new device, now another. "It was
astonishing," says Mr. Smiles, "to observe the rapidity of the
improvements effected,--every engine turned out of Stephenson's
workshops exhibiting an advance upon its predecessor in point of speed,
power, and working efficiency."
By this time George had taken up his residence at Tapton House, near
Chesterfield, where he continued to reside for the remainder of his
life. Close by were some extensive coal-pits, which he had taken in
lease, and from which he supplied London with the first coals sent by
railway. He was now a man of wealth and fame, known and honoured
throughout his own country, and in many foreign ones, and blessed with
many a staunch, true friend. More than once he was offered knighthood by
Sir Robert Peel, but declined the honour. As he grew up in years, he
gradually abandoned his railway business to the charge of his son, and
settled down into a quiet country gentleman of agricultural tastes. He
was very fond of gardening and farming, and spent many a long day
superintending the operations in the fields. When a boy, he had always
been very fond of taming birds and rabbits, and had once had flocks of
robins, which, in the hard winter, used to come hopping round his feet
for crumbs. And now, in his old age, he had special pets among his dogs
and horses, and was proud of his superior breed of rabbits. There was
scarcely a nest on his estate that he was not acquainted with; and he
used to go round from day to day to look at them, and see that they were
kept uninjured.
The year before his death he visited Sir Robert Peel at Drayton Manor.
Dr. Buckland, the geologist, was of the party. One Sunday, as they were
returning from church, they observed a train speeding along the valley
in the distance.
"Now, Buckland," said Mr. Stephenson, "I have a poser for you. Can you
tell me what is the power that is driving that train?"
"Well," said the other, "I suppose it is one of your big engines."
"But what drives the engine?"
"Oh, very likely a canny Newcastle driver."
"What do you say to the light of the sun?"
"How can that be?" asked the professor.
"It is nothing else," said the engineer. "It is light bottled up in the
earth for tens of thousands of years--light, absorbed by plants and
vegetables, being necessary for the condensation of carbon during the
process of their growth, if it be not carbon in another form; and now,
after being buried in the earth for long ages in fields of coal, that
latent light is again brought forth and liberated, made to work as in
that locomotive, for great human purposes."
On the 12th of August 1848, this great, good man--one of the truest
heroes that ever lived, and one of the greatest benefactors of our
country--passed from among us, leaving his son, Robert, to develop and
extend the great work of which he had laid the foundation.
Among one of the first railways of any extent of which Robert Stephenson
had the laying out, was the London and Birmingham; and it is related, as
an illustration of his conscientious perseverance in executing the task,
that in the course of the examination of the country he walked over the
whole of the intervening districts upwards of twenty times. Many other
lines, in England and abroad, were executed by him in rapid succession;
and it was stated a few years ago, that the lines of railway constructed
under his superintendence had involved an outlay of L70,000,000
sterling.
The three great works, however, with which his name will always be most
intimately associated, and which are the grandest monuments of his
genius, are the High Level Bridge at Newcastle, the Britannia Bridge
across the Menai Straits, and the Victoria Bridge across the St.
Lawrence at Montreal. The first two are sufficiently well known--the one
springing across the valley of the Tyne, between the busy towns of
Newcastle and Gateshead; the other spanning, in mid air, a wide arm of
the sea, at such a height that vessels of large burden in full sail can
pass beneath. The third great effort of Robert Stephenson's prolific
brain he did not live to see the completion of. The Victoria Bridge at
Montreal is constructed on the same principle as the Britannia Bridge,
but on a much larger scale. "The Victoria Bridge," says Mr. Smiles,
"with its approaches, is only sixty yards short of two miles in length.
In its gigantic strength and majestic proportions, there is no structure
to compare with it in ancient or modern times. It consists of not less
than twenty-five immense tubular bridges joined into one; the great
central span being 332 feet, the others, 242 feet in length. The weight
of the wrought iron on the bridge is about 10,000 tons, and the piers
are of massive stone, containing some 8000 tons each of solid masonry."
After the completion of the Britannia Bridge, and again after the
opening of the High Level Bridge, Robert Stephenson was offered the
honour of knighthood, which, like his father before him, he respectfully
declined. In 1857 he received the title of D.C.L. from the University of
Oxford; and for many years before his death he represented Whitby in
Parliament. He was passionately fond of yachting, and almost immediately
after a trip to Norway in the summer of 1859, he was seized with a
mortal illness, and died in the beginning of October. On the 14th
October he was buried in Westminster, amongst the illustrious dead of
England.
No man could be more beloved than Robert Stephenson was by a wide circle
of friends, and none better deserved it. "In society," writes one who
had opportunities of intercourse with him, "he was simply charming and
fascinating in the highest degree, from his natural goodness of heart
and the genial zest with which he relished life himself and participated
its enjoyment with others. He was generous and even princely in his
expenditure--not upon himself, but on his friends. On board the
_Titania_, or at his house in Gloucester Square, his frequent and
numerous guests found his splendid resources at all times converted to
their gratification with a grace of hospitality which, although
sedulous, was never oppressive. There was nothing of the patron in his
manner, or of the Olympic condescension which is sometimes affected by
much lesser men. A friend (and how many friends he had!) was at once his
equal, and treated with republican freedom, yet with the most high-bred
courtesy and happy considerateness.... His payment of half the debt of
L6000, which weighed like an incubus on an institution at Newcastle, is
generally known; but his private charities were as boundless as his
nature was generous, and as quietly performed as that nature was
unostentatious. Such, then, was Robert Stephenson, as complete a
character in the multifarious relations of life as probably any man has
met or will meet in the course of his experience. Not unlike, or rather
exceedingly _like_, his father in some respects, especially in the easy,
unimposing manner in which he went about his life's work, he was hardly
to be accounted his father's inferior, except perhaps in the heroic
quality of combativeness. Father and son, independently of each other,
and both in conjunction, have left grand and beneficent results to
posterity, and both recall to us Monckton Milnes's men of old, who
"'Went about their gravest tasks
Like noble boys at play.'"